Liz Birenbaum, 60, does 30-minute strength sessions twice a week through a midlife workout programme. Photo / Frances F. Denny, The New York Times
A new wave of fitness programmes claim to be specifically tailored for midlife. Here’s what to know about them.
Liz Birenbaum, 60, had spent most of her adult life dreading strength training. But this year, when she was 12 years post-menopause and still navigating symptoms like hot flushes and broken sleep, she found a programme specifically designed for women in her stage of life.
After being laid off from her job during the pandemic, Birenbaum took up tennis and boxing. Both got her heart rate up, but she knew lifting weights was important for protecting her muscle and bone density. So she occasionally forced herself through sets of leg presses and triceps extensions at her gym in Chappaqua, New York.
She later signed up for the “Midlife Movement Program” on The Sculpt Society fitness platform, which pairs resistance workouts with videos about hormonal changes.
She now does 30-minute strength sessions twice a week; arms and core work are her favourites. She said the program lets her show up without feeling judged like she did at the gym. “I don’t have somebody looking at me up and down, going: ‘Oh, cute outfit. And what are you doing for your abs?’”
Menopause has moved into the cultural mainstream, and strength training has emerged as one of the most consistent recommendations for healthy ageing, from influencers and medical experts alike. Recently, more and more fitness brands have introduced programs built around the premise that midlife women require specialised workouts.
The market is sizable: about half the female population in the United States is older than 40, and approximately 2 million women enter perimenopause each year. The fitness industry has noticed. But are these programs meeting a real need or manufacturing one?
The physiological case for exercise at this stage of life is well established: as oestrogen levels decline during menopause, the body becomes more vulnerable to changes in muscle, bone and metabolic health.
In the years right before and after a woman’s final menstrual period, bone density declines sharply, raising the long-term risk of fractures. Even women who maintain the same weight tend to lose muscle and gain fat – especially visceral fat, which can raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Strength training, weight-bearing activity and regular aerobic exercise can help mitigate those changes, said Rebecca Thurston, the associate dean for women’s health research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Resistance training helps preserve muscle and supports bone health. Aerobic exercise helps protect the heart and has been shown to boost mood. Weight-bearing movement can help prevent falls.
Exercise may not fully stave off these physiological changes, Thurston said, but what women do during menopause can lay the groundwork for their health for decades to come.
Fitness brands are rushing to meet the moment. Pvolve, which offers streaming workouts and operates brick-and-mortar studios across the country, launched menopause programming in 2022, in partnership with menopause telehealth company Elektra Health. In 2025, Pvolve introduced a six-week “Menopause Strong” series, with five sessions a week focused on strength, mobility and stability work, some with optional cardio bursts.
Last year, Peloton partnered with Respin, a menopause wellness platform, on a midlife program that includes strength, cycling, jump training and meditation classes.
The Sculpt Society, best known for its dance-cardio workouts, followed this year. Its new midlife plan includes a progressive-overload option. In it, instructors cue advanced participants to pick up 5 - 7 kg dumbbells, but members are encouraged to adjust the weight and intensity based on their energy levels that day.
Megan Roup, the founder of The Sculpt Society, said she developed her midlife programme after turning 40 and confronting the fitness advice she often saw on social media. “It almost felt like women in midlife were being guided to train for the Olympics,” Roup said. “It was pushing sleds and lifting 150 pounds (68kg)”
Most menopause fitness programmes pair workouts with an online community. And they often lean on the vocabulary of clinical authority: “science-backed,” “doctor-led” and “clinically informed”.
The Sculpt Society, for example, features physicians from midlife telemedicine platform Midi Health in its videos. Peloton’s partnership with Respin includes webinars led by what the two brands call “menopause coaches”. At Pvolve, Dr Jessica Shepherd, an OB-GYN and the author of Generation M: Living Well in Perimenopause and Menopause, serves as the head of medical affairs.
Lauren Colenso-Semple, a muscle physiology researcher, is sceptical that midlife requires a fundamentally different approach to fitness.
The principles of effective training, she said, are the same at every age. Women need to lift weights that are challenging, push their muscles close to the point of failure on each set, and gradually increase the load over time.
“I don’t think things should change,” she said, “with the caveat that most premenopausal women probably aren’t doing effective training.”
She described some midlife-targeted workouts as “more gimmick than really helping women do what they need to do to maintain muscle, bone density, balance and overall physical function”. Programs built around very light dumbbells or resistance bands often fall short, she said.
A 5kg dumbbell “is challenging at first,” she said. “Give it a few weeks, that’s no longer challenging, and we need to up the load”.
Thurston is similarly wary of how the industry targets midlife women. “Menopause is everywhere as a marketing slogan,” she said. “Be aware that you are now a demographic that has been identified as marketable.”
Birenbaum knows the wellness industry is eager to sell her something. “Women of my age have money to spend,” she said. “I have a lot more time than my 25-year-old daughter does.”
Sarah Dunay, 45, said the industry’s pitch tapped into concerns she was already having. Dunay, who lives in Cleveland, is perimenopausal and realised a couple of years ago that she needed to protect her muscle mass. In 2024, she saw a Pvolve commercial on television. “They said exactly what I was looking for,” she said. “A workout designed for women 40 and older.”
She now completes workouts from the brand’s menopause program at her home five days a week. She uses 7kg dumbbells to keep challenging herself, and recently recruited two friends to log on with her. “I can’t say enough about how confident I feel in my body,” she said.
Starting a new exercise routine is difficult, and sustaining one is harder, Thurston said. Community, accountability and seeing other midlife women participating can lower the barrier to showing up.
Birenbaum doesn’t need instructors to mention hot flushes mid-class to feel seen. “I can take it or leave it,” she said. But she does value the comments from other midlife women on The Sculpt Society’s message board, whether they’re commiserating about brain fog or sharing healthy recipes.
The branding may help women find a way in, the experts said, but once they establish an exercise routine, the fundamentals are the same as at any age: progressive strength training, weight-bearing movement, aerobic exercise and consistency.
“The boring stuff is still the good stuff,” Thurston said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Liz Baker Plosser
Photographs by: Frances F. Denny
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