Halle Berry, 58, just sat down with author and menopause advocate Tamsen Fadal to share her new workout routine as she enters menopause – and her advice was golden.
‘I used to do a lot of cardio. Right now, I’m trying to put muscle mass on, so I lift weights now and I never used to lift weights before,’ she said. ‘I only did my own body weight and cardio like cycling and running. Now I just do pretty much boring – what I find boring – but it’s necessary for this stage of life, really just heavier weights than I’ve ever lifted, and I do it probably two days a week at least.’
Fadal replied: ‘Isn’t it funny we avoided the weight room for a long time? I didn’t even think about it,’ to which Berry said: ‘And because I never wanted to get muscly, you know I wanted to just stay healthy. I was doing it to manage my diabetes, but I didn’t want to be muscly and now I’m lifting heavy weights and I’m still not getting muscly. I’m just kind of holding on to the muscle that I have and that’s important at this age.’
What exactly does weightlifting look like for Berry? Well, we know she has trained with personal trainer Barry Lee Thomas since 2016, and in 2023, Halle shared a video of a ‘simple dumbbell workout’ the pair completed together. Here’s how to do it.
How to do the workout
- What weights and reps should I use? As Berry shared, her goal now is to lift ‘heavy’ weights, and according to female physiologist Dr Stacy Sims: ‘[Less] oestrogen – which plays a big role in muscle repair – during perimenopause means your muscles lose strength. Keep your reps low, and shoot for three to five sets of six to eight reps; fewer reps mean you can lift heavier, meaning more stimulation for your central nervous system (CNS), she says. ‘We typically rely on oestrogen to recruit muscle fibres and build strength, so you want to teach your CNS to pick up some slack.’ Aim for a weight that feels challenging for 3-5 sets x 6-8 reps, but doesn’t completely exhaust you.
- You’ll see that the exercises in this workout combine one core stability, or one conditioning move with one weighted upper-body exercise. This will mean you won’t be able to lift as heavy on the upper-body portion as you might if you performed the upper-body move on its own – and that’s okay. Remember that proper form is fundamental for results; you want to aim to lift as heavy as you can with these exercises, but not so much that your technique suffers. Save lifting your max weights for individual exercises.
- When should I rest? Rest for 45 seconds between exercises, and 2-3 minutes between rounds.
The workout
Warm up: Perform each stretch for 60 seconds
Workout: Perform 6-8 reps of each exercise, resting for 45 seconds between exercises. Repeat the whole circuit 3-5 times.
- Dumbbell arnold press + jump squat
- V ups + dumbbell overhead press
- Jumping jack + burpee
- Jump squat + dumbbell overhead press
- V tucks + dumbbell overhead press
- Jump squat + dumbbell front raise
As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director (and a qualified yoga teacher), Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism. She secured her first role at Look Magazine, where her obsession with fitness began and she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!. Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red.
Now, she oversees all fitness content across womenshealthmag.com.uk and the print magazine, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, where we showcase the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise. She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how.
Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.
