EJT Coaching

It's the first proper week of September, everyone's talking about fresh starts and new routines, and I want to talk to the women who are reading all of that and feeling absolutely nothing.

Because there's a perimenopause symptom nobody puts on the list, and it might be the most demoralising one of the lot.

The motivation goes.

Not gradually, not reasonably. One day you're a person who gets up and goes, and some time later you're a person who stands in the kitchen at 6pm, looking at her gym bag, unable to think of a single reason to pick it up. And because nobody warned you this was part of it, you conclude the worst possible thing: that you've gone soft. That you've let yourself go. That you used to be better than this.

You haven't, and you weren't. Oestrogen has a direct effect on mood, drive and energy, and when it starts fluctuating, that flattening is a physiological event, not a character flaw. I've watched genuinely determined women, women who raised children, ran departments, finished marathons, sit in my gym and apologise to me for not being able to make themselves care. It is one of the cruellest tricks this stage of life plays.

So here's what I actually tell them, and what I've had to learn myself.

Motivation is not the entry fee. I have never in my life felt motivated before a session I didn't fancy. Not once. I go anyway, and somewhere around the third exercise the wanting quietly turns up, because for most of us, motivation follows action rather than causing it. Waiting to feel like it before you start is waiting for something that arrives afterwards.

And when it's really bad, shrink the session instead of skipping it. Twenty minutes. Two exercises. Something that's honestly easier to do than to talk yourself out of. It's not about the training effect of those twenty minutes, it's that you don't break the thread, and the thread is the entire thing. Once it snaps, it's weeks before most of us pick it back up.

Some of the most important sessions my clients have ever done were the ones they nearly cancelled. Not because they were good sessions. Because they happened.

So if you're going into September running on empty while everyone around you seems to have found a new gear, you're not behind, and you're not broken. Tell me honestly: has your motivation changed in a way you couldn't explain? I think a lot of us would be relieved to hear we're not the only one.

So here's something to think about over your breakfast, because your breakfast might be the thing quietly holding your training back.

I work with a lot of women in their 40s and 50s who are doing everything right in the gym. Turning up twice a week. Lifting properly. Progressing sensibly. And still feeling like the results don't match the effort.

Nine times out of ten, when we look at it honestly, the training isn't the problem. The protein is.

Here's the way I explain it to clients. Lifting is the request, it's you asking your body for muscle. Protein is what your body actually builds the answer out of. If the materials aren't there, the request goes unanswered, no matter how good the session was.

And this gets more important, not less, as we get older. From around our 40s our muscles become less responsive to protein, the same meal sends a smaller signal than it did at 30. So we need more of it just to hold onto what we've got, and more again to build. It's one of the genuinely unfair bits of this stage of life, and almost nobody mentions it.

A rough working guide is somewhere around 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilo of bodyweight a day. When I ask women to actually count what they're having for a few days, nearly all of them are well under it, and almost always because of breakfast. Toast, cereal, a coffee on the way out. A perfectly nice start to the day with barely any protein in it, at the point in the day when it would do the most good.

So the fix is usually smaller than people fear. Get 25 to 30 grams into that first meal, eggs, Greek yoghurt, a decent shake if you're rushing, and spread it across the day rather than saving it all for dinner. That's it. Nothing exotic, no supplements aisle required.

You can't out train an under fuelled body. Especially not this one, at this stage.

Genuine question, no judgment: what did you have for breakfast this morning, and roughly how much protein do you reckon was in it? Most of us have no idea, I certainly didn't until I checked.

I want to talk about a sentence I hear almost every week, and I suspect a lot of you have said it, out loud or in your head.

"I want to get a bit fitter before I get a personal trainer."

I understand it completely. But sit with it for a second, because it's a strange thing when you look at it directly. It's "I'll get better at this on my own, before I let someone show me how to do it properly." We'd never say it about learning to drive, or learning to swim. We'd never expect ourselves to be halfway competent before the first lesson.

What's really underneath it, usually, isn't fitness at all. It's the fear of being watched. Of being the least capable person in the room. Of someone glancing over while you're red-faced and out of breath and quietly judging. And I get it, most gyms are built in a way that makes that fear entirely reasonable. Busy floors, mirrors everywhere, people who've clearly been doing this for years, and equipment you'd have to ask about in front of everyone.

So let me tell you what happens on my side of it. When a woman walks in for the first time, nervous, apologising for how unfit she is, telling me about all the years she didn't do this, I am not judging her. I'm thinking: good. She's here. That was the hardest part and it's already behind her.

And it's exactly why my gym is private. It's you and me and nobody else. No queue for the squat rack, no audience while you learn, no one to measure yourself against. You can be rubbish at something for a few weeks in complete peace, which is genuinely how everyone learns anything.

You don't need to be fit to start. Starting is how you get fit. That's not a motivational line, it's just the order things happen in.

So tell me honestly, has the thought of being watched ever stopped you walking into a gym? I'd really like to know I'm not the only one who's felt it.

Can I tell you the thing I change most often when a woman over 40 starts training with me? It's almost never the exercises. It's the weight on the bar.

So many of us learned to strength train in an era of light dumbbells and high reps. Pick something you can manage for 15, do three sets, feel a bit of a burn, move on. And it was fine, it just wasn't ever really strength training.

Here's why it matters so much more now. From perimenopause onwards we lose muscle faster than we used to, and muscle is what keeps us upright, capable and steady on our feet for the next forty years. Muscle only rebuilds when it's asked to do something genuinely difficult. If a set is comfortable all the way through, your body has no reason to change anything. It just gets a bit more efficient at doing something easy.

The rule I give every client is this: the last two reps should be hard. Not horrible, not form-wrecking, hard. If you finish a set and know you had another five in you, that was a warm up, and there's no shame in that. We all start somewhere. But it's information.

For most strength work, six to ten reps is the sweet spot. And every couple of weeks, we nudge something up, a kilo, an extra rep, a slightly deeper range. Small, boring, relentless progress. That's the entire secret, and it isn't very glamorous.

The women who see their bodies genuinely change in their 40s and 50s aren't the ones training the most. They're the ones progressing.

Honest question: when did you last increase a weight you were lifting? And do you know what the heaviest thing you can safely pick up actually is?

Client Spotlight: Kerstin Voelz Smashes Her First Triathlon Finish!

I’m so proud of my client Kerstin Voelz, who completed her latest UK Triathlon Race event with an official finish time of 00:50:24.2 — placing an impressive 10th out of 34 in her category.

Race Breakdown:
● Swim: 5:52.3
● Transition 1: 2:31.9
● Cycle: 25:11.8
● Transition 2: 1:49.8
● Run: 14:58.4

I’ve been working with Kerstin since January, focusing on her strength training to build the power, stability, and resilience she needs to support her swim, cycle, and run performance. Watching her progress over these months has been brilliant, she’s put in consistent, dedicated work, and this result speaks for itself.

A top 10 finish out of 34 competitors is a fantastic achievement, and I couldn’t be prouder of how far she’s come.

Kerstin isn’t stopping there, her next goal is to take on a 10K road race, and I’ll be putting together a dedicated run coaching plan to help her get there. Can’t wait to see what she achieves next!

A conversation for the runners, especially anyone with a September or October race creeping closer.

I want to talk about the pattern I see constantly in women runners over 40. It goes like this: running feels harder than it used to. Then a calf ni**le. Rest, recover, build back up, then a knee. Then a hip. Each comeback a little slower than the last, and somewhere in the middle of it all, the quiet, defeated thought: "maybe my body just can't do this anymore."

It can. But here's what's changed, and nobody tells us: running is brilliant at using strength and terrible at building it. Every mile draws on muscle, tendon and joint resilience, and from perimenopause onwards, that resilience is quietly declining unless we actively rebuild it. The runs didn't get more dangerous. The reserves got smaller. That's not age being cruel; it's a strength gap, and strength gaps close.

What closes them is two short strength sessions a week. Squats, step-ups, calf raises, and single-leg work especially, because running is essentially thousands of single-leg hops in a row, and most of us have never trained a single leg in our lives. Progressively heavier over time, because tendons adapt to load, not to stretching. Thirty minutes, twice a week, genuinely counts.

And to the fear I hear every time "won't the gym work make me slower?"no. It's the opposite. A stronger runner has a more powerful stride and better running economy. Most women I coach run faster once they're strong, on top of staying injury free enough to actually train consistently. Consistency is where the speed was hiding all along.

After 40, strength work isn't the boring extra alongside running. It's the thing that decides whether you're still running at 60.

Runners, be honest: how many strength sessions are in your typical week right now? No judgment whatsoever. That number just might explain a lot.

I used to think the answer to my changing body was more cardio. Then my own body called my bluff.

Mid-40s. Running further than I ever had. Eating carefully. Doing everything the magazines had spent thirty years telling me to do.

And I was more tired, more achy, and further from feeling like myself than ever.

I remember genuinely thinking: my body is broken.

It wasn’t. It was perimenopause, and every extra run I added was another withdrawal from an account that needed deposits.

The turning point wasn’t dramatic. Someone I trusted asked me a simple question: “When did you last do something to get stronger, rather than just more tired?”

I didn’t have an answer.

So I swapped chasing miles for building strength, two sessions a week, heavier over time. And within months I felt more like myself than I had in years. The aches quietened. The energy came back. The running, ironically, got better too.

That’s why I coach the way I coach. Not from a textbook, I retrained my whole approach because of what I lived.

I get it because I’ve lived it. Every frustrated woman who walks into my gym is a version of me a few years ago.

If you’re doing everything right and going backwards, this is for you. Share it with a friend who’s there right now.

I want to talk about the sentence I hear more than any other in a first conversation with a new client. Some version of:

"I'm doing everything I used to do, more, actually, and my body is still changing. What am I doing wrong?"

And my answer, nearly every time, is: nothing. You're not doing it wrong. You're doing what worked at 35, and you're not 35.

Here's what's actually going on. As oestrogen falls through perimenopause, our bodies change where and how they store energy, for most of us, that means the middle. At the same time, we start losing muscle faster than before, and muscle is the engine of the whole operation. Less muscle means everything runs a little slower, even if nothing else about your life has changed.

So we do what we were all taught: more cardio, eat a bit less. And it backfires, because that approach adds stress to an already stressed system and does absolutely nothing to rebuild the muscle we're quietly losing. Which is why so many women in their 40s are training more than ever, eating less than ever, and feeling like their bodies have stopped listening.

They haven't stopped listening. They're waiting for a different message.

Two proper strength sessions a week to rebuild the engine. Enough food, genuinely enough, to fuel it. Easy walking on the days between. And patience, because bodies rebuild on their own timetable, not ours. That's the whole shift, and I watch it work in my gym week after week, on real women with real lives.

Be honest with me: have you ever caught yourself training more and eating less, and feeling like it made things worse? You are in enormous company.

I'm opening 3 spaces in my private gym for September, and I want to tell you why September, specifically.

Because I've watched the same pattern for years. August is chaos: holidays, kids everywhere, no two weeks the same. Then the first week of September arrives, the routine clicks back in, and every year I get a flurry of messages that all say some version of "right, it's time."

If that's going to be you, here's what working together actually looks like.

You train in a completely private gym. Just the two of us, no crowds, no queues for equipment, no mirrors full of strangers, nobody watching you learn. For a lot of the women I coach, that privacy is the thing that finally made starting possible after years of putting it off.

Your programme is built around your body and your hormones, proper strength training, designed for where you are in perimenopause, adjusted week by week for how you're actually sleeping and feeling. No generic plan, no guesswork.

And it's structured as a 6 or 12 week progression block, because that's how real change happens, not one off sessions, but a run of consistent weeks with a clear thread through them. Women who start in September are astonished by where they are at Christmas.

1:1 sessions are £30 and blocks start from £180. I'm local and in person, this one's for women who can get to me.

The discovery chat is free and there's no obligation at all: calendly.com/emmarealpt/discovery-chat

What would you want to feel different by Christmas? Tell me below, I read every answer.

(Pic - last of the holiday spam…promise!)

There's a question I get asked in a first session more than any other. It usually comes out quietly, half apologetically, somewhere between the cup of tea and the first exercise:

"Be honest with me, have I left it too late?"

I've been asked it at 48. At 53. At 61. Always with the same slightly braced expression, as if I might actually say yes.

The answer has never once been yes. Here's why.

Muscle doesn't have a cut off date. It responds to training at every age, it's simply been waiting for a reason. Bone is the same: loading it matters more in our 50s and 60s, not less. And here's the bit that surprises people most, women who've never trained before often see change faster than anyone, because a body that's never been asked to adapt has the most to give.

The real cost was never starting late. It's the years spent not starting at all, because "it's probably too late anyway" a sentence that has quietly robbed more women of their strength than any birthday ever has.

And I understand where the fear comes from, because most gyms make starting feel like an exam. Mine doesn't. It's completely private, just you and me, no fitness test, no weigh in, no one watching. We start exactly where you are, even if where you are is never having picked up a dumbbell. Especially then, actually.

So tell me, is there something you've quietly written off as "too late" for you? I'd genuinely love to hear it, because I suspect it isn't.