What If We Learned to Train Intuitively?

This week, something rather simple came back to me.

I was leading our Silver Linings retreat, away from my usual routine, spending more time in nature and returning to practices I have loved for years: yoga, breathwork, meditation, walking, stretching, stillness.

And I remembered how much I love them. But perhaps more importantly, I remembered how much I need them.

Not because I have suddenly decided strength training isn’t important. If you’ve been reading my work for any length of time, you’ll know how strongly I believe in building and protecting muscle as we move through perimenopause, menopause and into later life.

But somewhere amongst the dumbbells, protein targets, step counts, progressive overload and relentless stream of midlife advice appearing on our screens, I wonder if we are in danger of losing something equally important.

Our intuition.

I realised this week that even after a lifetime spent moving, teaching and studying the body, I am not immune to the Instagram vortex.

• Lift heavier.

• Eat more protein.

• Get your steps.

• Train for bone health.

• Build muscle.

• Don’t forget your Zone 2.

• Add some HIIT.

• Recover properly.

• Sleep eight hours.

All of these things can have a place. Many of them are things I talk about myself. But stack enough good advice on top of a woman who already has a career, children, ageing parents, fluctuating hormones, disrupted sleep and an actual life to live, and suddenly wellness starts to look suspiciously like another job. And I don’t think that’s the answer.

‘Train the woman, not the cycle’.

In an earlier piece, I introduced an idea that has become central to The Midlife Movement Method: Train the woman, not the cycle.

It came from my frustration with overly simplistic messages telling women exactly how they should exercise according to a particular day of their menstrual cycle. For many women in perimenopause, the cycle isn’t particularly interested in following the calendar. So instead, I started thinking about the woman standing in front of me.

• How did she sleep?

• How does she feel?

• What has she already done this week?

• How much stress is she carrying?

• Does her body feel ready to be challenged?

• Or is today a day when movement needs to give something back?

That thinking eventually became our Red, Amber and Green approach. It helps answer the ‘what’. What kind of movement might serve me today?

But this week I started thinking about another layer. What if we also need to relearn how to train intuitively?

Intuition isn’t the absence of structure

I want to be careful with the word intuitive. I don’t mean abandoning the things we know matter. Nor do I mean waking up every morning and only exercising if we happen to feel like it.

There are days when I don’t particularly fancy training and I know perfectly well that once I start, I will feel fantastic.

Intuition isn’t always choosing the easiest option. Sometimes my body wants to lift something heavy. Sometimes it wants to work hard, sweat and be challenged.

Sometimes I feel extraordinarily capable, and listening to my body means allowing it to do more, not less.

But there are other days when what I need is completely different.

• Yoga.

• A long walk outside.

• Twenty minutes of mobility.

• Breathing.

• Spinal movement.

• Stretching on the floor.

• Or rest.

The skill is learning to recognise the difference.

Perhaps we need both a map and a compass

This is where my thinking around midlife movement is evolving. We need the map.

We know that strength matters. Muscle matters. Cardiovascular fitness matters. Mobility matters. Balance matters. Recovery matters.

Those things give us the broad architecture of a strong, healthy body for the decades ahead. But perhaps intuition is our compass.

It helps us navigate that map according to the body we actually woke up in this morning. And that body isn’t static, especially in perimenopause.

Sleep changes. Energy changes. Stress changes. Hormones fluctuate. Life happens.

A training plan that completely ignores those signals isn’t necessarily more disciplined.

Sometimes it is simply less responsive.

My body has been whispering for years

There was another realisation for me on retreat. I don’t think my body suddenly decided this week that it loves yoga, breathwork, spinal movement and nature.

It has been telling me for years. I just haven’t always been listening. Of course when I did my training in lots of these modalities, I was super-focused and it felt wonderful but when life becomes busy, it is incredibly easy for me to prioritise the things that feel measurable and just tick the box:

The workout completed.

The weight lifted.

The protein consumed.

The steps logged.

But some of the things that make me feel most profoundly well are much harder to put into a graph. They include:

• Moving slowly in the morning.

• Breathing deeply.

• Standing barefoot outside.

• A beautiful yoga practice.

• Moving my spine in every direction.

• Walking somewhere green.

• Being quiet.

• Breathing or sighing loudly (thank you Anne-Marie!)

None of these things looks particularly impressive on Instagram.

My body doesn’t seem to care. It knows how they make me feel.

Midlife is making me listen

Perhaps this is one of the gifts of this stage of life?

My younger body tolerated being overridden remarkably well. I could push through tiredness. Add another session. Ignore recovery. Keep going.

My midlife body is asking for a more interesting relationship. It still wants to be challenged but it also wants to be heard. And increasingly, I don’t see those things as opposites.

Strength and softness can coexist.

Effort and recovery can coexist.

Structure and intuition can coexist.

A woman can care deeply about maintaining muscle and also decide that what she needs today is an hour of yoga. She can eat plenty of nourishing protein without turning every meal into a mathematical exercise. She can pursue strength without allowing strength training to become the entire definition of fitness.

Perhaps the goal isn’t to find the perfect prescription. Perhaps it is to become so connected to our bodies that we know how to work within a framework without becoming imprisoned by it.

The intuitive layer

This is the layer I want to explore more within The Midlife Movement Method.

We have the framework.

We have the movement portfolio.

We have Red, Amber and Green days as a guide,

But underneath all of it, I want women to develop something much more valuable than the ability to follow another programme.

I want us to become experts in our own bodies.

To notice.

To respond.

To know when to push.

To know when to soften.

To understand the difference between resistance and genuine depletion.

To choose movement not because Instagram told us what women over 40 are supposed to do today, but because we understand both what our bodies need now and what we are building for the future.

There is science. There is structure. There are things we know matter enormously for women’s health and longevity. But there is also you.

And perhaps one of the most powerful things we can do in midlife is turn down some of the external noise long enough to hear what our own bodies have been trying to tell us.

Train the woman, not the cycle.

And perhaps now I would add: Teach the woman to listen.