Strength Training Over 30: How to Protect Your Core and Pelvic Floor
Part One: The 3 Biggest Mistakes Women Make When Exercising Their Core
Part Two:
Part Three:
Part Four: Strength Training Over 30: How to Protect Your Core and Pelvic Floor
Did you know that after age 30, women naturally begin to lose muscle mass and bone density at a faster rate? Strength training is one of the most powerful ways to combat this, helping you stay strong, mobile, and independent for life.
But as a pelvic floor physical therapist, I see a concerning pattern: many women develop core and pelvic floor dysfunction as they age—and it's often made worse by how they’re strength training. The very thing meant to support their health is, in some cases, making their pelvic floor symptoms worse.
Here’s the good news: when you improve your lifting posture and learn to breathe properly during resistance training, strength work becomes therapeutic for your core and pelvic floor. Your larger muscles do the heavy lifting, while your pelvic floor gets better circulation—not pressure.
Strength training can be safe and is essential at any age—as long as it’s done the right way. And it plays a vital role in your long-term strength, balance, and vitality.
Why Women Face Unique Challenges as We Age
Women's bodies face specific challenges that make us more susceptible to core and pelvic floor problems over time. Understanding these factors helps explain why proper strength training technique becomes even more critical as we age.
Bone Density Loss
After menopause, declining estrogen levels cause women to lose bone density rapidly. This puts us at higher risk for fractures, especially in the spine, hips, and wrists. Strength training with proper loading can significantly slow this process and even build new bone tissue. Its also essential for healthy joints as you age.
However, if you're lifting with poor posture or breathing patterns, you're not getting the full bone-building benefits. Worse, you might be creating spinal compression, lowering your organs, and overloading your pelvic floor leading to leaking, dryness, bloating, pain and sexual dysfunction.
Natural Muscle Mass Decline
Women lose muscle mass faster than men as we age, particularly in our core and glute muscles. This muscle loss affects our posture, balance, and overall strength. Regular resistance training can preserve and even build muscle mass, but only when your core is functioning properly to support the increased loads. You want to ensure your strengthen training technique builds muscle mass in all the right places, while keeping your joints healthy and pain free.
Wider Pelvis and Weaker Pelvic Floor
Women naturally have a wider pelvis than men, which creates different mechanical stresses on our pelvic floor muscles. Add in the effects of pregnancy, childbirth, and hormonal changes throughout life, and our pelvic floors become increasingly vulnerable to dysfunction as we age.
A weaker pelvic floor means less support for your bladder, uterus, and bowel. It also means less stability for your spine during strength training. When you lift weights with a dysfunctional pelvic floor, you're putting enormous pressure on already compromised tissues.
How Strength Training Might Be Making Things Worse
Strength training should support your body as you age, but I see so many women accidentally sabotaging their progress with poor technique.
If you're lifting weights while holding your breath or bearing down, you're creating massive pressure spikes in pressure in your abdomen. This pressure pushes your organs down and out, which is exactly what you don't want if you're dealing with prolapse, back pain, bloating leaking, or that heavy feeling in your pelvis.
Poor posture during lifting is just as problematic. When you have a forward head, tuck your tail, or squeeze your shoulder blades excessively, you're compressing your spine and organs instead of creating the space and support they need.
I've worked with countless women who thought they were doing everything right by hitting the gym regularly, only to find their core dysfunction getting worse. Their back pain increased, their leaking got more frequent, and that low belly pooch became more pronounced.
The good news? When you lift with proper breathing patterns and alignment, every single rep becomes a core strengthening exercise. Your organs stay lifted and supported, your spine finds its natural curve, and you build real functional strength that actually protects your body.
The exercises themselves aren't the problem; it's how you're doing them. Learning to breathe correctly and maintain proper posture during strength training can be the difference between feeling stronger and feeling worse.
How to Identify if Your Core is Ready for Strength Training
Before jumping into a strength training routine, you need to assess whether your core can handle the increased demands. The simplest way to do this is with the cough test.
Lie on your back with your hands on your low belly- below your belly button. Now cough. Watch what happens to your abdominal muscles. If they pull inward, that's a negative cough test - your core is managing pressure properly. If they push outward or dome, that's a positive cough test - your core isn't ready for heavy lifting yet.
A positive cough test means that when pressure increases in your abdomen (which happens during a cough and with every lift), that pressure is going through your organs and supportive fascia instead of being absorbed by your muscles. Lifting weights in this state will make your dysfunction worse and potentially cause injury.
If you have a positive cough test, not to worry. This can be fixed with the protocol inside The Core Recovery Method®. Be sure focus on the Hypopressive exercises from the protocol before progressing to strength training.
2 Key Techniques for Safe Strength Training
Proper Posture for Safe Lifting
Proper posture during strength training creates the optimal environment for your core muscles to function. When your posture is off, your core can't work properly no matter how strong you think you are. But when your spine maintains its natural curves and your ribcage aligns over your pelvis, your deep core muscles can actually engage and support your organs. This alignment allows your pelvic floor, diaphragm, and deep abdominal muscles to work together as they're designed to. This creates real strength.
Neutral Spine
Maintain the natural curves in your spine during all lifts. This means keeping a gentle inward curve in your lower back, not flattening it against a bench or rounding it forward. And a slight outward curve in your upper back. Do not squeeze the shoulder blades. Your spine is strongest in its natural S-shape.
Long Waist
Keep as much space as possible between your rib cage and pelvis throughout every movement. This lifting of the rib cage away from the pelvis creates room for your organs, tightens the abdominal fascia, reduces waist circumference, and allows your core muscles to function optimally.
Aligned Ribcage
Your rib cage should be stacked over your pelvis, not flared forward or collapsed inward. This alignment allows your diaphragm to work effectively and prevents excessive pressure in your abdomen.
Decompression Breathing During Lifts
Proper breathing during strength training is absolutely critical, yet it's rarely taught correctly. Most people either hold their breath or breathe in ways that create harmful pressure patterns.
Here's how to breathe safely during strength training:
Before the Lift: Take a breath through your nose into your rib cage, allowing 360-degree expansion. This pre-loads your core muscles and creates stability.
During the Lift: Maintain this rib expansion while gently exhaling or maintaining neutral breath pressure. Never hold your breath completely, and never forcefully exhale in a way that collapses your rib cage. Simply stay in exhale for the entire movement.
Between Reps: Inhale between reps. If you need more of a rest, return to normal decompression breathing - full inhalation into the rib cage, gentle exhalation while elongating the spine and maintaining rib expansion.
This breathing pattern keeps your core muscles active throughout the lift while managing pressure safely. It takes practice, but it's the difference between strength training that builds you up versus breaking you down.
Modifications for Common Exercises
Many popular strength training exercises can be made safer with simple modifications. Here are a few examples:
Squats: Keep your waist long and ribs expanded throughout the movement. Breathe into your rib cage at the top, maintain that rib cage expansion as you descend and rise.
Deadlifts: Focus on lengthening your waist and maintaining neutral spine curves. Avoid rounding your back or flattening your lower back completely.
Overhead Presses: Keep your ribs stacked over your pelvis instead of flaring them forward. This protects your lower back and allows proper core engagement.
The Core Recovery Method® Approach to Strength Training
The Core Recovery Method® teaches you how to strength train safely for life. The program includes specific protocols for returning to lifting weights, running, and other high-intensity activities postpartum or after recovering from core or pelvic floor dysfunction.
You'll learn exactly how to breathe during different types of lifts, how to modify exercises to protect your core, and how to progress safely as you get stronger. More importantly, you'll understand how to listen to your body's signals and adjust your training accordingly.
The techniques you learn in The Core Recovery Method® prevent problems while actively enhancing your strength training results. When your core is functioning optimally, you can lift heavier, perform better, and recover faster from your workouts.
Strength Training as Self-Care
As women age, strength training becomes an act of self-care and empowerment. It's how you maintain your independence, protect your bones, and stay strong enough to do the things you love. But it has to be done right.
Don't let fear of dysfunction keep you from strength training, and don't let improper technique turn a healthy activity into a harmful one. With the right foundation - proper breathing, posture, and core function - you can strength train safely and effectively at any age.
Your future self deserves a body that's strong, pain-free, and fully functional. The choices you make in your strength training routine today determine whether you're building that body or breaking it down. Choose techniques that work with your body's natural systems, and you'll reap the benefits for decades to come.
The Core Recovery Method® gives you everything you need to build and maintain a strong, healthy core that supports you through every lift, every workout, and every activity in your life.
Join me inside The Core Recovery Method®, and get strong from the inside out.
