17/11/2025
Lynn, you’re always so focused on strength training, weightlifting, jump power, etc. But I’ve been running at least 10 km, 3 times a week for years, and I feel great about it. I don’t think I need to stop doing that, right?
➡️ Cardio training like running, swimming, rowing… definitely has its place in a healthy lifestyle. It improves your cardiovascular health, increases insulin sensitivity, positively impacts your mental well-being, lowers blood pressure, and optimizes your lipid profile, among other benefits.
But in perimenopause, long-distance endurance training can seriously spike your stress hormones, which need buffering from estrogen. And guess what? Estrogen is precisely declining during this phase! 😱 Disclaimer, it is not a steady lineair proces, it is rather a rollercoaster phenomenon and defined by the ratios with your other hormones. Some of us will early on in perimenopause ‘suffer’ from that lack of buffer during periods of very low estrogen. It remains a very individual thing.
Moreover, overdoing it with running or cycling can lead to muscle loss, especially if your protein intake is low. And in perimenopause, muscle breakdown accelerates due to hormonal shifts! 😱
I’ll never badmouth cardio; it’s actually my favorite workout. But I really monitor the duration, I am not gonna count how many calories I have burnt with a weighted walk or endurance row because the metabolic effects of a workout are far more important that the absolute number of calories you supposedly burnt.
💡 Think of it like a financial investment: strength training is a low-risk, high-yield asset, while endless cardio is like a savings account with interest rates that barely beat inflation. (I’ve worked in banking, so I know 🙈)
*You can make strength training almost risk-free by prioritizing good technique and focusing on progressive overload with enough rest!*
