We Need to Rattle the Bones and Get Breathless

There seems to be a moment in midlife when we’re told to calm everything down.

Walk more.

Stretch more.

Reduce stress.

Don’t overdo it.

Protect your joints.

Be careful with cortisol.

…And there is wisdom in some of that.

Recovery matters enormously in perimenopause. Sleep really matters (what little we get!). Nervous-system regulation matters and if you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ll know I’m a huge advocate for walking, Pilates, Barre, mobility and movement that leaves us feeling better, rather than completely depleted.

But I think we’ve allowed another message to creep in alongside it: Midlife women should stop doing hard things and I don’t agree.

In fact, as we move through perimenopause and menopause, there are two physical experiences I very deliberately want to keep in our lives: we need to get breathless and, where appropriate: we need to ‘rattle the bones’.

Let me explain. Getting breathless is still important because cardiovascular fitness matters enormously as we age.

Cardiorespiratory fitness means essentially how effectively your heart, lungs, circulation and muscles work together during exercise and it is strongly associated with long-term health.

One of the most efficient ways of challenging that system is interval training. Now, this doesn’t have to mean the terrifying HIIT classes many of us remember from our 30s. It doesn’t need to mean 45 minutes of burpees (although I do sometimes throw those in!).

It certainly doesn’t need to mean crawling out of the studio afterwards to collapse in a heap.

Research in middle-aged and older women suggests that relatively short bouts of higher-intensity interval exercise can improve cardiorespiratory fitness. That’s important because one of the principles underpinning the Midlife Movement Method is that we don’t necessarily need more exercise, we need more intelligent exercise.

We need to give the body a reason to adapt and sometimes that means lifting something heavier, sometimes it means slowing down and sometimes it means getting properly out of breath.

Why my cardio sessions are short

This is why my Barre Cardio/HIIT format deliberately keeps the main cardiovascular work at around 20 minutes.

Now that’s not because there is some magical hormonal cliff at minute 21. There isn’t.

And whilst we are on that topic, I think we need to be careful with some of the claims currently circulating about women, HIIT and cortisol. The evidence simply doesn’t support a universal rule that women in perimenopause must never exercise intensely for longer than a particular number of minutes.

My reason is much more practical. Twenty minutes is enough time to create a meaningful cardiovascular challenge without turning the session into an endurance event.

We work. We recover. We work again.

The heart rate rises and breathing becomes harder. Then we allow the body to recover sufficiently to produce another good-quality effort. It’s short, purposeful and — importantly — repeatable.

Because the best programme isn’t the workout you survive once, it’s the programme your body can adapt to and you can continue doing consistently.

Then there’s the other piece: our bones

This is where I think midlife exercise conversations sometimes become too simplistic.

Walking is wonderful. I try to walk almost every day (a challenging thing in Bali due to potholes, crazy scooters and large amounts of dog poo!)

It supports cardiovascular health, mental health, metabolic health, recovery and connection. But walking alone isn’t the complete answer for preserving bone.

Bone is living tissue, and, just like muscle, it responds to the demands we place upon it.

Exercise research in postmenopausal women consistently shows benefits from resistance training and weight-bearing exercise, with programmes incorporating higher-intensity resistance and impact appearing particularly interesting for maintaining or improving bone mineral density.

This is why I talk about needing to “rattle the bones.”

It’s not a scientific term — clearly! But I think it creates a useful picture.

Your skeleton needs to experience mechanical stimulus. Muscles pulling against bone provide one form of stimulus. Impact provides another.

• A little hop.

• A controlled jump.

• A skip.

• A jog.

• A heel striking the floor.

• Moving sideways and changing direction.

Those forces travel through the skeleton and give bone a reason to respond.

There is however a distinction I think every midlife woman should understand: getting your heart rate up and loading your bones are not necessarily the same thing.

You can get beautifully breathless on a bike and your cardiovascular system receives an excellent stimulus. But because cycling is supported and non-impact, your skeleton isn’t experiencing the same loading it might from jumping, hopping or running.

Your heart doesn’t know whether you’re cycling or jumping. Your bones do.

That is why the Midlife Movement Matrix includes different forms of movement.

One workout cannot, and should not , be expected to do everything.

I’m not telling every woman to start jumping. When I say we need impact in midlife, I don’t mean everyone should suddenly start performing box jumps.

More isn’t automatically better. Some women will already have osteopenia or osteoporosis (more to come on this). Some will have joint problems. Some will be managing pelvic-floor symptoms. Some haven’t jumped for 15 years and some simply won’t feel confident doing it yet.

That’s why every Barre Cardio session I teach offers different levels of impact.

I think of them roughly as:

GROUND. LIFT. POWER.

GROUND keeps one foot connected to the floor.

We can march powerfully, squat, step laterally, drive the knees, use heel drops and move through large ranges of motion.

And make no mistake:

Low impact does not mean low intensity. You can become seriously breathless without leaving the floor.

LIFT introduces controlled moderate impact — perhaps a jog, skip, small jump, jack or skater.

And POWER is there for the woman whose body is conditioned for more dynamic movement: greater force, more multidirectional work and stronger jumps or hops.

The choreography can remain almost identical. The cardiovascular intention remains.

What changes is the mechanical load.

And I think that’s a far more intelligent way of offering modifications than calling one version “advanced” and another “beginner” because you’re not taking the easy option.

You’re choosing the stimulus appropriate for your body today.

We don’t need endless jumping either. This is another important distinction.

If impact is useful, the answer isn’t necessarily more impact. Bone responds to mechanical loading, so I would much rather see controlled, high-quality bouts of impact than hundreds of increasingly sloppy jumps performed while exhausted.

That has influenced the way I’m programming my Barre Cardio sessions. There are moments designed to challenge cardiovascular fitness and there are moments designed to introduce impact.

And there are moments deliberately designed to recover.

Work. Recover. Repeat.

Rather than:

Go hard. Go harder. Collapse.

That difference might sound subtle but I think it’s fundamental.

And cardio cannot replace strength

If there is one message I want women to understand about exercise in midlife, it’s this:

No single modality gives us everything we need:

• Walking is wonderful — but it isn’t strength training.

• HIIT is wonderful — but it isn’t necessarily bone loading.

• Barre is wonderful — but we still need progressive resistance.

• Yoga and mobility are wonderful — but they don’t replace cardiovascular fitness.

This is exactly why I created the Midlife Movement Matrix.

I don’t want women obsessing over finding the perfect workout. I want us to build a portfolio of movement that protects different parts of our future health.

• Strength.

• Cardiovascular fitness.

• Balance.

• Mobility.

• Power.

• Coordination.

• Bone loading.

• Recovery.

Some days we lift. Some days we Barre. Some days we walk. Some days we stretch and breathe. And occasionally, I want us to turn the music up, move our bodies dynamically and get properly, gloriously out of breath.

This is not about burning calories

Perhaps this is the biggest shift in how I think about cardio now. For years, particularly for women, cardio was sold to us as a way of making ourselves smaller.

Burn more. Sweat more. Eat less. Run it off.

I have absolutely no interest in teaching cardio from that perspective anymore. I’m thinking about the woman you want to be at 60, 70, 80 and — as I often say — Strong Enough for 85™️.

Here’s Why…

Can your heart respond when life demands more from it?

Can you climb several flights of stairs without feeling completely depleted?

Can you move quickly when you need to?

Can you catch yourself?

Can you jump over something?

Can you run for the bus?

Can your bones tolerate impact?

Do you still have power?

These aren’t aesthetic questions. They’re questions about capacity and capacity is something we have to practise.

Midlife isn’t the moment to stop challenging the body. It’s the moment to become much more intelligent about how we challenge it. We don’t need punishment (Perimenopause delivers enough challenges already). We don’t need exhaustion for exhaustion’s sake (because most of us are sleeping poorly in this stage of life). And we certainly don’t need to fear every rise in our heart rate because someone on Instagram told us it would spike our cortisol.

We need challenge followed by recovery. Strength followed by rest and impact appropriate to our individual bodies. Movement that stimulates rather than annihilates.

And a programme varied enough to give our hearts, muscles, bones, brains and nervous systems what they each need.

So yes, I want you walking.

I want you stretching.

I want you sleeping.

I want you recovering.

I want you lifting.

But every now and again?

I also want us to rattle the bones and get breathless.

Not because we’re trying to punish the body we have today.

Because we’re training for the body we want to live in for decades to come.

Strong now. Strong for what comes next.