The best exercise for optimal health after 40?

Your exercise of choice and workout routines that may have served you well in your 20s and 30s often need a serious upgrade by the time you hit 40. You might notice that what used to work—like intense cardio or back-to-back workouts—no longer delivers the same results. In fact, persisting with your ‘old strategies’ can leave you feeling exhausted, gaining body weight, or even, lead to injury. So, what is the best exercise for optimal health after 40, and how can you shift your routine to reflect the needs of your changing body?

Let’s dive into why an evolution in your fitness approach is not only beneficial but essential for maintaining strength, balance, and overall health as you age.

Focus on Recovery: More Isn’t Always Better

In your 20s and 30s, you may have been able to push through consecutive workout days with minimal rest. However, after 40, your body requires more time to recover between sessions. Recovery becomes just as important as the workouts themselves, and failing to give your body time to heal can lead to burnout or injury.

• As you age, muscle recovery slows down, which means you need more time to repair after strength training or intense exercise. All of the good things happen in the recovery phase of your training, not in the workout itself, so when you skimp on recovery, you sell yourself short.
• Without sufficient recovery, you increase stress in your body and risk overtraining, which can lead to inflammation, injury, or adrenal fatigue.

Joint-Friendly Exercises: Prioritize Low-Impact Movements

As we age, the wear and tear on our joints becomes more apparent and often in perimenopause, sore joints can really impact how you feel in your every day movement, let alone your training. High-impact workouts, like long-distance running or jumping exercises, can exacerbate joint pain or stiffness, especially if you’ve experienced prior injuries. After 40, it’s time to focus on exercises that strengthen and protect your joints while still delivering results.

• Aging naturally leads to decreased cartilage and lubrication in the joints, which makes high-impact movements harder on the body.
• Over time, pushing through pain or discomfort in your joints can lead to longer-term issues like arthritis or joint degeneration.

Strength and Stability: The Key to Longevity

After 40, one of the most important shifts in your fitness routine should be an increased focus on lean muscle, strength and stability. Muscle mass naturally declines with age, which can lead to a slower metabolism, increased body fat, decrease in strength and general function and a loss of balance. Strength training helps combat these effects while keeping your muscles and bones strong.

Why it matters:

• Muscle mass: Strength training helps maintain muscle mass, which boosts your metabolism, supports bone health, supports brain health, improves insulin sensitivity and helps with fat loss.
• Bone health: Resistance exercises help prevent bone density loss, reducing the risk of osteoporosis.
• Balance and stability: Building core strength and improving stability reduces the risk of falls or injuries, which become more common and have more serious implications, as we age.

Hormone-Sensitive Training: Why Too Much Cardio Can Backfire

While cardio is great for cardiovascular health, too much of it—especially intense, long-duration cardio—can elevate your cortisol levels (your body’s stress hormone). This can lead to unwanted side effects like increased fat storage, particularly around the belly, extreme exhaustion, failure to recover and disrupted hormonal balance. After 40, it’s critical to adopt a workout routine that respects your body’s hormonal shifts AND you can use exercise to optimise your health at this time.

Why it matters:

• Excessive cardio can spike cortisol levels, leading to amongst other things, increased fat storage—especially in the abdominal area.
• Hormonal imbalances during peri/menopause can make it harder to lose weight, and intense cardio can worsen the issue.
• Balancing hormones through the right mix of exercise and recovery will help optimize fat loss, energy, and overall health.

Increase Your Daily Movement: The Power of NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)

Another significant shift after 40 is realizing that formal workouts are just one part of the equation. Increasing your daily movement outside of workout sessions is crucial for overall health and longevity. This is where NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) comes in—these are the calories you burn doing daily activities like walking, cleaning, or even fidgeting. Increasing NEAT can help you burn more calories throughout the day without exhausting your body through long, draining cardio sessions.

Why it matters:

• Increasing daily movement helps you stay more active without placing additional stress on your body with high-intensity workouts – while your workout might contribute to only 10% of your daily energy expenditure, your NEAT can contribute to up to 35%.
• NEAT (ie just being more active all day, every day) is key for maintaining a healthy metabolism and managing weight, especially if you’ve hit a plateau.

Final Thoughts: Evolve Your Workouts to Stay Fit and Healthy

As your body evolves with age, so should your workouts. Prioritizing recovery, choosing low-impact, joint-friendly exercises, focusing on strength and stability, and being mindful of your hormone health are all key to staying fit and strong after 40. And remember, increasing your daily movement is just as important as your workouts—focus on staying active throughout the day to support your overall health.

You don’t need to push through gruelling cardio sessions or overwork your body to see results. In fact, a smarter, more balanced approach will help you achieve your goals while keeping your body functioning optimally.

Not sure where to start? Sign up for our FREE 7 Day Workout Series where we have laid out 7 days of exercise & movement to show you just how to structure your week.

Anna & Em xo