Katy at Play Fitness and Coaching

We've added sessions for the first time in nine months. That doesn't happen very often. There's a reason it's happening now.

From the 3rd of August, we're launching Thursday sessions at 7:30am, 8:30am and 9:30am, taking us to 24 sessions running across the week.

We haven't added capacity in nine months. This is the first time in that time we can say there's genuinely more room in the squad.

If you've been waiting, or telling yourself you'll look into it properly one day, that day now has a date.

To mark the launch,we are running a two week free trial.

Two sessions a week.
Come and see what it's actually like.
Meet the women who train with us, at every experience level, and learn firsthand what they've got out of it.

No pressure to commit beyond showing up. Just an honest look at whether this is the right environment for you, because that should be your decision, made with real information.

DM us TRIAL to grab your free two week trial.

Katy

There's a sentence we hear on nearly every single call.

"And then COVID happened."

It doesn't matter what the something was, running, a class, just being generally active without thinking about it too hard. COVID stopped it. And whatever came after never quite got round to starting it again.

Most women say it like it was recent.

Do the maths properly and it's 5 or 6 years. That's not a gap.

That's long enough that you could have had a child, and they are starting school this September. Long enough to change jobs twice. Long enough that the version of you who used to do that thing feels like someone else entirely.

None of that is about willpower. It never is. Something huge happened to everyone at once, and normal life never fully handed itself back the way it was before.

What actually closes a gap like that is finding somewhere that doesn't care how long you've been away. No judgement on where you're starting from. No assumption you should already know what to do.

Just a proper, honest rebuild, at whatever pace that actually takes.

The gap is real. So is the fact you can still close it.

Comment "COVID" below if you've just done the maths and it's more than you expected.

Katy

She came in after the hottest week we've had all year.

She'd had a cold. She'd missed sessions. The conditions were about as unhelpful as they get.

She equalled her PB on her deadlift.

And she was disappointed.

We sat with that for a moment. Because the instinct is so understandable. She knows what she's capable of on a good week. This wasn't a good week. And she hadn't moved beyond where she already was.

But here's what we chatted about afterwards.

She came in. After a cold, in a heatwave, having had a disrupted run of sessions. She loaded the bar and she pulled the same weight she'd pulled on her best day.

That's not a failure to progress. That's evidence of how solid the foundation actually is.

And arguably if she'd come in with a following wind rather than a cold and a heatwave the PB woluld have been smashed.

Progress isn't always the number going up. Sometimes it's the number holding steady when everything around it is working against it.

There is no 'only' in this story. She didn't 'only' equal her PB. She equalled her PB. In conditions that would have sent most people home.

We're Play Fitness & Coaching. Small groups, central Brighton, for midlife and older women by midlife women.

DM us START if you want a natter about why we could be your favourite place to strength train.

Katy x

We ask every new client what they want to achieve over the next six to twelve months.

Almost none of them lead with weight loss.

Not because they don't want to lose weight. Sometimes they do. But that's not the first thing out of their mouths.

What they actually say:

"To rediscover the value of doing something for myself."
"To regain some of my identity."
"To feel like I'm future-proofing."
"I don't want to fade away."

These are not fitness goals but have all been said in the last few months in consultations.

They're life goals. And strength training happens to be one of the most direct routes to all of them.

When someone says they want to lose weight, what they usually mean underneath that is: I want to feel like myself again. I want to feel capable. I want my body to feel like mine. Weight loss is often the surface request. Agency is the actual one.

These women are also not starting from zero. They know what they need. They've read the articles. The gap isn't information, it's a place where the information has somewhere to land. A structure that survives a bad week. People around them who already get it because they're in the same chapter.

That's what we're here for.

DM us START and tell us what you actually want. We'll take it from there.

Katy x

Something I don't talk about much.

My Instagram feed is full of women lifting heavier than me. Leaner than me. Training for events I'll never enter.

These are people I follow because I respect what they do. Some of them are coaches. Some just train for themselves and happen to share it.

And some weeks... it gets in my head.

I'm 49. I don't train for Hyrox. I don't follow a structured programme aimed at a very specific outcome. I train in a way that feels good for my body, keeps me strong and healthy, and fits around running a business and a life. My numbers aren't going up dramatically. I'm not doing body recomposition. I'm not preparing for anything.

And occasionally, not always, but occasionally, I look at my feed and wonder if I'm doing it wrong.

What I keep coming back to is this.

I'm training for my life. Not for the algorithm. Not for a before and after. Not for an event that gives me a finish line and then a "what now?" on the other side.

I'm training so that my body works for me rather than against me. So that at 49, having rebuilt from a place I never want to go back to, I feel like myself.

Comparison is a thief. We all know that. But the more useful question is: what exactly are you comparing yourself to? Because if the answer is "someone training for a completely different life with completely different goals"... the comparison was never valid in the first place.

Training for your life is enough. It's actually the whole point.

Katy x

She came in nervous of injury.

Irene is 66. She does ballet and tap dancing. She swims in the sea in summer and works an allotment. She is not someone who doesn't move. She just hadn't found the right place to build the strength that makes all of it last longer.

She'd tried gyms before. Hated them. Too big, too anonymous, a young trainer who couldn't quite relate. So she stopped going.

She came to us five weeks ago wanting to get stronger, tone up, and in her words 'to feel like I'm future-proofing.'

This is what she wrote at her five-week point:

"I'm loving attempting anything with weights. Previously I was nervous of injury."

That shift from nervous to attempting is the whole job in five weeks. Not the final destination. The beginning of something.

And what she'd say to a friend on the fence: "Go for it. I've already had these conversations with friends."

Irene is going for it now and is joining us full-time.

We coach women from their mid-40s into their 70s. They come in nervous, curious, sometimes a bit sceptical. Five weeks in, they are attempting things they wouldn't have tried. Noticing things they didn't expect. Telling their friends.

This is not remarkable. This is what happens when the environment is right.

DM us START if you'd like to find out what your five weeks looks like. I promise you you won't regret it, just like Irene hasn't.

Katy

It's not that you don't know what to do.

You know. You all know. If I asked every woman who walked through our door to tell me what would help, she could list it without thinking.

More strength. More sleep. More protein. Less of a few other things.

The information is not the problem. It has never been the problem.

What's missing is a place where the information actually has somewhere to land. A structure that survives a bad week, not just a good one.

People around her who don't need context... who already get it... because they're in the same chapter.

We've been coaching midlife women in person, in our small group strength set up for three and a half years.

The women who stick are not the most motivated women who walk in. They're the ones who found an environment that made sticking possible.

That's the whole thing, really.

If you've been knowing what you need to do for quite some time now... DM us START.

We can have a natter and you can see if we are the right environment for you.

Katy

Strength training is the only exercise intervention with consistent evidence for improving bone mineral density in postmenopausal women.

Pilates, despite being widely recommended for midlife women, does not produce the same effect. And that distinction matters.

Here's the science.

Bone responds to mechanical load. When muscles contract under resistance, they pull on the bones they're attached to. The body responds by building denser, stronger bone, a process called osteogenesis.

To trigger it, you need progressive, weight-bearing resistance. Load that increases over time.

In 2021, a systematic review and meta-analysis looked at 11 studies involving 591 women aged 45 to 78. The conclusion: pilates and yoga did not produce a statistically significant improvement in bone mineral density compared to control groups. The pooled effect size was 0.07. Negligible.

A 2023 network meta-analysis of 19 randomised controlled trials, covering 919 postmenopausal women, found that moderate-intensity resistance training three times per week was superior to other exercise protocols for improving lumbar spine and femoral neck bone density.

We also see this in our own clients. Some of the women who train with us have had ongoing DEXA scans throughout their time here. We have seen bone density improve. We have had clients who were previously osteopenic... and are no longer classified that way.

It is what consistent, progressive strength training does over time.

Pilates has real value. Core strength, mobility, posture, balance and fall prevention. We respect it. Several of our clients do both. Chloe is also a Pilates Instructor.

But it doesn't produce the osteogenic stimulus that progressive strength training does.

Both have a place. They are not interchangeable.

In perimenopause and menopause, as oestrogen levels shift and the body's ability to maintain bone changes, the distinction becomes significant.

The window for building bone density is not limited. And the evidence for what actually works is clear.

DM us START if you want to talk about what this looks like in practice.

Katy

She came to us in February to fix her back.

Her work is physical. Some days she's carrying heavy equipment across locations for hours. Other days she's sitting at a desk for most of the day. Her back had been a serious problem for years. An MRI. Regular physio. Constant pain.

She wasn't after a transformation. She had a specific, practical goal: to keep doing her job without it costing her everything by the end of the day.

Four months in, here's what she said:
"My back is so much better than it was. I was in constant pain and now I'm not, which is fantastic. Just feeling stronger and being in far less pain is a big change for me. It means I can continue doing my rather physical job... which is a massive win."

For anyone who's sitting on the fence this is what she says:
"Living in pain isn't worth it. If you can fix it with strength training, it's definitely worth a go."

We don't talk about this enough. Strength training isn't just a fitness intervention.

It's often a quality of life intervention. The ability to work, carry, sit, stand, bend... and not be paying for it for the rest of the day.

If something is getting in the way of the life or the work you want to have, we'd love to talk.

DM us START.

Katy

She lifted her suitcase into the overhead rack on the train.

She mentioned it three weeks later. In passing. While we were talking about something else entirely.

That's the bit that always gets me.

The lack of drama. In spite of it being a pretty big deal.

She didn't come to us to lift suitcases specifically though. She came because she wanted to feel stronger. To have more energy. To build something that would hold up as she got older.

And three months in, she's lifting her suitcase on the train without thinking about it.

She mentioned it like it was minor. It isn't minor.

It's Tuesday morning on a commute and your body does what you need it to do without a second thought. Without asking for help. Without calculating whether you can manage it this time.

That's what strength training actually delivers.

Not the numbers on the bar. Not the before and after. The Tuesday morning on the commute.

We're Play Fitness & Coaching. Small groups, central Brighton, for midlife and older women by midlife women.

Message us START if you'd like to find out what your version of that looks like.

Katy