EJT Coaching

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.

I want to talk about something none of us can see or feel happening, and it might be the most important reason to strength train in your 40s and 50s.

Your bones.

Oestrogen has been quietly protecting your bone density your entire adult life. As it declines through perimenopause, that protection goes with it, and the years around menopause are when women lose bone faster than at any other point. There's no ache, no symptom, no warning light. Which is exactly why it gets ignored until a decade later, when it really matters.

Here's what I wish every woman was told at 40: bones respond to load. They get stronger when they're asked to carry weight, and they quietly waste when they're not. Walking and swimming, brilliant as they are for everything else, simply don't load bone enough to make it adapt. Strength training does. A squat, a deadlift, a heavy carry: every one of those is a message to your skeleton saying "we still need you strong."

And here's the genuinely hopeful bit: bone responds at any age. I have women in my gym who started at 50 and 60, and their strength, and everything it protects is heading in the right direction. It is never too late to start sending that message.

Two sessions a week. Progressively heavier over time. That's the whole prescription, and your 70 year old self is the one who collects on it.

Be honest with me: has anyone, GP, gym, anyone ever actually talked to you about your bones? I ask because the answer I hear most is "no, never."

A message for anyone who's ever spent part of a holiday quietly worrying about "losing everything" because they've missed a week at the gym.

I want to put your mind at rest, because I hear this constantly and it's simply not how strength works. It takes far longer than a week to lose meaningful strength or muscle. What you've built through consistent training doesn't vanish because you were in Chicago instead of the gym, your body holds onto it considerably better than your brain gives it credit for.

What actually costs people their strength over time isn't one missed week. It's months of inconsistency, and specifically, it's the all or nothing thinking that turns one missed week into three, because "well, I've already lost it now, what's the point." That thought is far more damaging than any holiday.

So this week, while I'm away myself, here's what I'm actually doing: letting the week be what it is, walking, exploring, being fully present for it. A bit of bodyweight movement if I fancy it, not because I have to. Absolutely no catastrophic thinking about undoing months of work. And when I'm home, I simply pick my normal plan back up, exactly where I left it.

That's the entire trick. Not heroics. Just not letting one week become an excuse to abandon the other fifty one.

Have you ever cut a holiday short mentally because you were worried about "losing your fitness"? I'd love to hear it, I suspect most of us have done this at least once.