Pilates, yoga and long walks all have a place in a healthy week. For women past forty, though, there is one kind of training that matters more with every year, and it is the one many women were told to avoid: lifting weights.
Catalyst Performance, the best personal training studio in Singapore for women who want to stay strong for the decades ahead, builds its programmes around that idea. The studio sits at Manulife Tower in the Singapore Central Business District, and it treats strength after forty not as a trend but as a measurement problem.
Why the forties change the picture
Muscle and bone both decline with age, and for women the years around perimenopause and menopause speed that decline up. Those are the two tissues that decide whether a slip becomes a fall and a fall becomes a fracture.
The research on strength is consistent. Regular muscle-strengthening activity is associated with a 10% to 17% lower risk of death and major chronic disease, independently of aerobic exercise, according to a 2022 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Grip strength predicted death more reliably than blood pressure across 17 countries in the PURE study.
Weight-loss medication has added a new reason. An untrained person on GLP-1 medication can lose a quarter to nearly two-fifths of the weight lost as muscle and bone. Strength training is how women on these medications keep what they need.
In Singapore, life expectancy is about 83.9 years, but healthy life expectancy is closer to 74. For many women, strength is what decides how that last decade goes.
“Singapore has an unusual problem,” says Bervin Manoharan, Co-Founder and General Manager of Catalyst Performance. “Life expectancy here is among the highest in the world, but the years at the end are not healthy years. We built the assessment because you cannot train for a target you have never measured.”
Tested before a single weight is lifted
Every Catalyst client completes the Catalyst Healthspan Assessment, a health and fitness assessment covering four pillars: Body Composition, Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Stability and Strength. They resolve into a single Healthspan Score.
Body composition analysis shows lean mass against fat mass, which matters more than the number on a scale for a woman trying to protect muscle. A submaximal step test estimates cardiorespiratory fitness. Balance and joint control score stability. A standardised loading battery scores strength.
The programme follows the profile, and the tests run again on a fixed schedule. Singapore’s best personal training is the kind that can prove the number moved, and that is the standard Catalyst is built on. It is also how the studio set out to assemble the best personal trainers in Singapore, with every coach judged on measured change.
Who trains this way
Many of the women Catalyst coaches are working professionals in their forties and fifties who have done classes for years and plateaued. Others come in during perimenopause or menopause to protect bone and muscle, or while on GLP-1 medication to hold onto strength. Some are booked by their children, who want their mothers strong in their sixties and seventies.
Clients who prefer a female coach can ask for one. The studio’s female personal trainer programme in Singapore runs on the same four-pillar system, as does its personal training for adults over 50. Women returning after pregnancy start with the same test before load goes back on.
The look is not the finish line
Clients lose fat and build muscle, and a body transformation is often part of the result. It is not the point of the programme.
“The look comes with the work,” Manoharan says. “It is a stop on the journey, not the destination. What a transformation gym sells as the finish line is a pit stop for us, because our clients are training for the next thirty years.”
That is why Catalyst Performance delivers the best personal training in Singapore for women who want their strength measured and built on, not guessed at. Catalyst was built to be the best personal trainer Singapore offers on one test: what will you measure, and when will you measure it again?
Getting started
First-time clients pay from SGD 163.50 a session, and every programme starts with a complimentary 30-minute online consultation and a 60-minute in-studio assessment with a written report. Women who would rather train with a woman can start with the studio’s female personal trainer in Singapore programme, and those past fifty can read how personal training over 50 in Singapore is structured.
For readers not ready to book, the free online Healthspan Audit has been completed by over 1,000 adults in Singapore. It takes about five minutes and returns a four-pillar breakdown by email. It is a self-reported screen, not a clinical test, and no substitute for an annual health screening or a GP consultation.
References
Momma H, et al. Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2022;56(13):755-763.
Leong DP, et al. Prognostic value of grip strength: findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study. The Lancet, 2015;386(9990):266-273.
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Ensuring long lives are healthy lives in Singapore. IHME, University of Washington, 2023. healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/ensuring-long-lives-are-healthy-lives-singapore
LovelyWishy is a warm space filled with meaningful wishes, heartfelt messages, and thoughtful responses. We create simple, beautiful words that help you express emotions, celebrate moments, and connect with the people you love in a special and memorable way.