Strength Training Over 40: 4 Lessons For Beginners

Fuel Your Strength

Steph Gaudreau

Fitness, Health & Fitness, Nutrition

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Starting strength training after 40 can feel intimidating—especially when all the internet advice focuses on technical minutiae like deadlift angles or optimal rep ranges. But what if the biggest keys to success weren’t about that at all? In this episode, you’ll zoom out to the big picture and learn four foundational lessons that will make your strength journey more effective and sustainable from day one.

Using a year of personal experience learning to play the drums, this episode draws an insightful analogy between picking up a musical skill and building your strength training practice. If you’ve been unsure where to begin or find yourself stuck in perfectionist mode, this is the roadmap you’ve been missing. These aren’t quick hacks—they’re timeless mindset and behavior strategies that can keep you lifting for life.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

The type of mindset you need when starting something new
The thing to seek out early – even if you’re a total beginner
What to let go of to find joy in the process
Why these foundational lessons can help you stick with strength training when things get tough
How to apply these ideas whether you're brand new to lifting or getting back into it after a break

Enjoyed this episode and want more?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So you're over 40 and curious about starting strength training. How the hell do you even begin?
0:06.1	And usually the questions I get focus so much on the nitty gritty details. But on this podcast,
0:13.0	I'm going to be zooming out to four extremely key lessons that you need to focus on that keep the big picture in mind when you are starting
0:24.1	out on your strength training journey. If I could go back 15 years in time to when I first
0:31.0	started lifting weights, these are the four things that I wish someone sat me down and told me.
0:37.0	So in the interest of paying it forward,
0:39.0	that is exactly what I'm going to do for you in this episode.
0:44.9	If you're an athletic 40-something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself,
0:50.8	and doing hard shit, the fuel your strength podcast is for you. You'll learn how to
0:56.3	eat, train, and recover smarter so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, and perform
1:03.2	better in and out of the gym. I'm Strength Nutrition Strategist and Weightlifting Coach,
1:09.0	Steph Godro. The Fuel Your Strength
1:11.2	Podcast dives into evidence-based strategies for nutrition, training, and recovery, and why,
1:18.0	once you're approaching your 40s and beyond, you need to do things a little differently than you did
1:23.4	in your 20s. We're here to challenge the limiting industry narratives about what women can and
1:29.3	should do in training and beyond. If that sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app,
1:36.1	and let's go. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Steph Goddrow, your host. This is an episode that's going to
1:48.0	center on four lessons that I wish somebody told me about strength training way back at the
1:54.8	beginning when I started. And I'm going to teach you these lessons today through the lens of a very recent skill that I have
2:05.5	started acquiring. So I'm going to use an analogy of me learning this other skill and the sort
2:15.7	of coaching lessons that I applied to myself, but when I stepped back and thought
2:19.5	about it, I thought these also fit extremely well for fitness, especially with strength training.
	...

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