Is Weightlifting Good for Anxiety During Perimenopause?
Discover how weightlifting can ease anxiety during perimenopause, why it works on a physiological level, and tips to make it part of your routine.
Anxiety in Perimenopause
Anxiety is one of the most common and least expected symptoms of perimenopause. Many women describe a new, free-floating unease that feels different from the situational anxiety they have experienced before. It can show up as racing thoughts at night, a sense of dread without clear cause, irritability, or a physical buzz of tension that is hard to shake. Hormonal fluctuations, particularly shifts in progesterone, directly affect GABA receptors in the brain, the same receptors targeted by anti-anxiety medications. This gives perimenopause-related anxiety a genuinely physiological basis.
Why Weightlifting Helps
Resistance training acts on the anxiety response in several ways at once. It burns off the physical tension that anxiety produces, lowers cortisol over time, and promotes the release of endorphins and serotonin. Consistent lifting also improves sleep quality, which is a major driver of anxiety levels. Perhaps most importantly, it trains the body to tolerate and recover from physical stress, which gradually desensitises the nervous system to perceived threat more broadly. This is sometimes described as building stress resilience, and it is well supported by research.
Intensity Matters
Not all exercise has the same effect on anxiety. Very high intensity training, like sprint intervals done to exhaustion, can temporarily spike cortisol and increase anxiety in women who are already hormonally stressed. Moderate intensity weightlifting tends to produce better results for anxiety management. Working at around 60 to 75 percent of your maximum effort, taking full rest between sets, and finishing a session feeling tired but not wrecked is the sweet spot. Two to three sessions per week is sufficient.
Practical Suggestions
If anxiety makes it hard to focus during workouts, try using a simple, predictable programme rather than improvising. Having a clear plan removes one source of decision-making and helps you stay present. Breathing techniques during sets also help: exhale on the effort, inhale on the release. Between sets, slow your breath deliberately. Over time this creates a kind of moving meditation. Logging your sessions and symptoms in PeriPlan can show you whether your anxiety scores shift on days you train.
Combining Weightlifting with Other Approaches
Weightlifting works best for perimenopausal anxiety when it sits within a broader strategy. Reducing caffeine, limiting alcohol, prioritising sleep, and practising some form of relaxation on non-training days all complement what lifting does. Some women find that yoga or walking on rest days maintains the calm that strength sessions create. If anxiety is significantly affecting your quality of life, speak to your GP, as HRT, therapy, and other interventions can also be highly effective.
Starting Small and Building Consistency
The goal is not perfection. Even one or two sessions per week is enough to start shifting the anxiety baseline. Start with exercises you feel comfortable with, keep the sessions short if that is what you can manage, and build from there. Consistency across months matters far more than intensity on any single day. Tracking your progress gives you something concrete to look back on when anxiety tries to convince you that nothing is working.
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