Behaviors

After shaking someone's hand, sanitize your hands to reduce the chance of transferring viruses to your face.

Short bouts of stress can enhance immune function provided they do not impair sleep; cortisol is beneficial when elevated early in the day rather than late in the day or evening.

Upon waking, before brushing teeth, take a sip of clean water, swish it around in your mouth, and swallow it to potentially support the oral and gut microbiome.

If you feel unusual whole-body heaviness, fatigue, or a throat tickle, go home and rest rather than pushing activity; get into bed early, and even if you cannot fall asleep, remain as still and relaxed as possible.

Long-duration endurance efforts like marathon training can severely compromise innate immune function and increase vulnerability to colds and flus.

After warming up, keep most workouts to about 50 to 60 minutes, be very careful about exceeding 75 minutes in a single bout, avoid stacking two hard workouts in one day if you are prone to getting sick, and take one full rest day from exercise each week.

If you trained fasted and especially if the session exceeded 60 to 75 minutes, ingest complex carbohydrates and perhaps fruit within about 45 minutes to 1 hour after exercise.

Use sauna regularly to help keep colds and flus at bay: examples given include 3 rounds of 15 minutes with 2-minute cool-off periods between rounds, or a single 20- to 30-minute session. During breaks, you can take a cool or cool-ish shower or simply stand outside the sauna. Avoid sauna when already feeling really run down, heavy in the body, or starting to get sniffles.

Avoid long fasting windows such as holding the fast until noon or doing very low-calorie restriction days; described as detrimental for active women unless there is PCOS or another metabolic issue.

Women should not train in a fasted state because it increases cortisol and sympathetic drive and reduces ability to hit needed intensities; especially avoid fasted high-intensity or resistance training in perimenopause and beyond.

Use RIR/RPE to guide lifting; an 8 RPE corresponds to about 2 reps in reserve.

For older/perimenopausal women, emphasize heavy lifting with about 2 reps in reserve rather than high-rep fatigue work. The key when older is working heavy, not making 20-rep fatigue sets the main strategy.

If eating a fuller pre-training meal, allow roughly half an hour before training.

Do not stay in a prolonged post-exercise catabolic state; delaying food after training is described as harmful for lean mass in women.

General recommendation is at least 2 to 3 sessions per week, with 3 to 4 times per week preferred for many younger women. In women in their 40s+, aim for a minimum of 3 sessions emphasizing compound movements.

If younger women are training to failure, sessions may need to be about 45 to 60 minutes.

In the 30s, periodize training into roughly six-week blocks and build on them.

Choose upper/lower, total body, or another split based on what works for your life and available time, while allowing adequate rest.

For younger women, the key emphasis is working to failure to drive lean mass growth with strength.

Some literature supports emphasizing unilateral movements in older adults, not just bilateral simultaneous movements.

In mid-40s to early 50s, emphasize heavy lifting plus very easy recovery work and true high-intensity intervals, rather than spending lots of time in moderate intensity or making zone 2 the main optimization strategy.

Avoid making OrangeTheory-, F45-, SoulCycle-, or similar moderate-intensity classes the main strategy in women 40+; they are criticized for keeping women in moderate intensity, raising cortisol, and not delivering the desired high-intensity stimulus.

Long easy zone 2 work is framed as fine for mental health, nature exposure, and recovery, but not the main route for optimal health/body composition in older women.

For beginners intimidated by gyms, start with bodyweight movements at home such as lunges and squats while learning foot and knee positioning.

Use mobility work, such as Kelly Starrett's approach, to find movement sticking points before progressing.

Take time to adjust seat height and machine settings to get the correct range of motion rather than just sitting down and lifting.

Use lighter dumbbell patterns such as thrusters or hang cleans to learn movement, momentum, and coordination.

Walking is framed as the very low-intensity recovery side of polarized training; if doing something long, keep it very easy.

Example polarized session: 20 minutes of heavy lower-body lifting followed by 30-second all-out sprint intervals with full recovery as needed between efforts.

From day 1 of bleeding through ovulation, women generally have greater capacity for stress and may use this phase for PR attempts, heavier loads, and high-intensity work.