Strength Training During Menopause

Strength training gets recommended for almost everything in midlife, which can make it hard to tell what it will and won’t do during menopause. Humanic Blue separates two different jobs here: easing symptoms now and protecting the body for the decades ahead.

Resistance training—exercise against weights or another source of resistance—reliably improves strength in postmenopausal women, while the exact menopause-specific program for preserving muscle and bone remains uncertain. For symptoms, the evidence is much thinner. In a Swedish randomized trial, 15 weeks of supervised training three times a week reduced moderate-to-severe hot flashes by 43.6%, compared with 2.0% in controls. But a Cochrane review found the exercise evidence insufficient, and the 2023 Menopause Society position statement does not recommend exercise as a hot-flash treatment because evidence is limited or inconsistent. For living longer and better, the distinction matters: strength gains are supported more consistently than relief from hot flashes.

Can strength training ease menopause symptoms?

The trial that found an effect. Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden, led by Emilia Berin, recruited about 60 postmenopausal women who had at least four moderate or severe hot flashes or night sweats a day and didn’t exercise regularly. Participants averaged age 55 and about seven hot flashes a day.

Half did 15 weeks of supervised resistance training; half kept their usual activity. Among women who finished, moderate-to-severe hot flashes fell by 43.6% in the training group and 2.0% in the control group, a between-group difference of 2.7 episodes a day. This was a small single-center trial of inactive postmenopausal women, not a trial in all perimenopausal or postmenopausal populations.

What happened next. In an observational two-year follow-up, about three fifths of the eligible participants returned. The original training group still had fewer moderate-to-severe symptoms than the control group at six months, but the groups did not differ significantly at two years; both reported fewer symptoms and more moderate-to-vigorous activity than at baseline. The follow-up was small, lost many participants and no longer controlled who exercised after the 15-week intervention, so it cannot show that stopping training caused the group difference to disappear.

A second, smaller trial. In a 2025 Turkish trial, about 40 postmenopausal women with moderate or severe symptoms did 12 weeks of bodyweight resistance exercise twice a week plus walking three times a week, or no program. Symptom severity, sleep quality and mood scores improved more in the exercise group. It combined strength and walking, so it can’t isolate strength training’s effect.

Why experts remain cautious. The Cochrane review by Amanda Daley and colleagues, covering five earlier trials of mostly aerobic exercise in about 700 women, found no evidence of a difference in hot-flash frequency or intensity versus no treatment. Its authors concluded that the evidence wasn’t enough to show whether exercise works as a treatment for hot flashes and night sweats.

The Menopause Society’s 2023 nonhormone position statement does not recommend exercise as a treatment for hot flashes and night sweats, rating the evidence limited or inconsistent. It recommends cognitive behavioral therapy, clinical hypnosis, several medications and weight loss based on different levels of evidence, and identifies hormone therapy as the most effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms in appropriate candidates.

The Cochrane review predates the resistance-training trials. The Menopause Society statement came after the Swedish trial and still rated the exercise evidence as limited or inconsistent. The Swedish result is encouraging, but the broader evidence has not established exercise as a hot-flash treatment. The newer Turkish trial adds a finding about a combined exercise program, rather than settling the question for strength training alone.

How do the small trial and the broader review differ in what they establish about hot flashes?

What can strength training protect long-term?

This is where the case for strength training during menopause is stronger, though the evidence is more certain for strength than for preventing menopause-specific tissue loss.

Muscle and strength. A 2026 meta-analysis of studies covering about 4,000 women—about two thirds postmenopausal—found improved strength and modest reductions in fat mass in both pre- and postmenopausal groups. The combined results did not show a clear difference in training response before and after menopause. A separate 2025 systematic review found only six randomized trials specifically in women aged 45–60 who were perimenopausal or early postmenopausal; all were rated low-quality with high risk of bias, and it could not identify an optimal method for preventing bone and muscle loss during the transition. The fuller muscle evidence is in Protect Muscle During Menopause.

Bone. A 2026 meta-analysis found small average bone-density benefits from high-intensity, impact and strength programs at the hip’s femoral neck and the lower spine in postmenopausal women. Each estimate, however, was based on fewer than 200 women. These programs are not interchangeable, and fracture prevention was not established. Bone-specific training and safety are covered in Strength Training for Bone Health.

Body composition. Fat shifts toward the waist during menopause, a change covered in Body Composition During Menopause.

What did the trial’s training program involve?

The Swedish trial used a supervised program:

• Frequency: three sessions a week for 15 weeks.
• Exercises: eight exercises covering the major muscle groups.
• Volume: two sets of 8 to 12 repetitions.
• Load: based on the heaviest weight each woman could lift eight times, then increased gradually.

This describes the hot-flash trial; it is not a validated universal prescription. Current US Physical Activity Guidelines recommend muscle-strengthening activity involving all major muscle groups on at least two days a week for broad health. The Turkish trial showed that a lighter home program combining bodyweight exercise twice weekly with walking was feasible over 12 weeks, but because the intervention combined exercise types and enrolled only about 40 women, it cannot isolate a strength-training effect.

Which details of the supervised program matter when interpreting its symptom findings?