Someone said to me once, the best way to theft-proof your car is to get a manual stick shift.

They weren’t wrong. There aren’t many of us left who get to that stop sign on a steep hill and think, how much do I rev it so I don’t stall out?

The gears in a car are the perfect analogy for what happens to many of us in perimenopause or in our 40s and 50s. You know how to drive. You’ve been doing it for years. You know the sound of your own engine: when to shift, when to push, when to glide.

But lately, it’s like you’ve lost fifth gear. You’re strong, you’re fit, you’re doing all the right things… yet when it’s time to dig deep, to find that little something extra, you’re just revving. You can see the effort, you can feel the drive, but nothing more comes out.

And in that moment, you don’t even care who passes you. You’re just done. Later though, it hits you. You want that feeling again, that edge, that grit, that spark that made you love pushing your limits.

I’ve been there. And here’s what I learned (and what science now explains):

1. Your engine has changed.

Hormonal fluctuations in perimenopause change how efficiently your body accesses and uses energy. Estrogen and progesterone play huge roles in carbohydrate metabolism, recovery, and thermoregulation. When they fluctuate or decline, the “fuel mix” changes.

You may still have the same horsepower, but the tuning is off.

That’s why midlife training needs to sync with your physiology, not fight against it. Understanding your cycle, fueling intentionally, and aligning recovery with training stress are essential to getting that responsiveness back.

2. You’re running on stress, not power.

If you’ve been living on high alert for years, managing work, family, training, and everything else, your body is likely running on adrenaline instead of adaptation.

Chronic stress, lack of sleep, and under-fueling keep your nervous system in overdrive. You’re revving in fourth gear all the time. When you finally need fifth gear, there’s nothing left.

Training hard isn’t the problem; training without recovery is.
Stress itself can be functional when it’s intentional and targeted, but unmanaged, it becomes strain.

Balancing training and recovery, knowing when to push and when to pull back is how you rebuild that reserve of power.

3. You need to shift how you train.

In perimenopause and beyond, consistency to a polarized training model beats all-the-time hard work. The right combination of strength, polarized cardiovascular intensity (i.e., REALLY hard and easy) and strength endurance work supported by good fueling and purposeful recovery, restores your ability to shift gears when you want to.

That’s why, in Team Element, we focus on intentional, physiology-aligned training cycles:

• Mindset in Flow: Recognize what capacity you have this week and train within it.

• Nutrition in Sync: Nourish for health everyday and fuel your workouts so your body knows it’s safe to perform.

• Train with Intention: Quality over quantity: make the work count.

• Recovery on Purpose: Because adaptation is where the gains are made.

This approach is what brings the responsiveness back, the ability to accelerate again without burning out. Get a deeper look at the MNTR approach and how it supports your training in midlife.

Learn More 

4. You haven’t lost grit. You’ve lost access to it.

That fifth gear is still there, it just needs a tune-up.
When you train with awareness, connect what your body is telling you, and take targeted action, you re-learn how to access your full range.

That’s the ACT method: Awareness, Connect, Take Action: the foundation of our MNTR Integrated Training System.

Here’s the truth.

You haven’t lost your edge. You’ve just been trying to drive a high-performance machine with the wrong calibration.

Your body is changing. The way you train, fuel, and recover needs to change with it. Once you learn how to listen to what your body is saying, how to work with it, that fifth gear comes back online.

And when it does, it feels even better than before. Because this time, it’s powered by wisdom, not willpower. It’s grounded in health, not hustle.

What If You Don't Even Have Gears Yet?

When Tenille talks about “losing fifth gear,” a lot of experienced athletes nod along because they know exactly what that feels like. But if you are just starting out, or coming back to sport after years focused on kids, career, illness, or anything else life threw at you, you might be thinking something very different:

Fifth gear? I am not even convinced I have first.

This is one of the most common things I hear from beginners and returning athletes, especially midlife women. You do a workout, you try to find your “easy,” and instead your heart rate shoots straight up and your legs feel like they are on fire. Meanwhile, the internet keeps telling you to “stay in Zone 2,” and you are standing there wondering if Zone 2 mysteriously disappeared the same year your period did.

Let me reassure you: nothing is wrong with you.
Your body is not failing.
You are simply at the beginning of a new chapter.

Midlife brings hormonal shifts that change how your body uses energy. Add years of chronic stress, under-fueling, and pushing through life’s demands, and it makes total sense that everything feels harder than it “should.” You are not imagining it; your engine is learning how to run differently now.

Here is the part beginners never get told:

New athletes do not start with five gears. They start with something much simpler:

Easy-ish
Hard-ish

Sometimes the whole thing just feels hard, and that is okay. Your “easy” returns with consistency, confidence, and time.

That is why the MNTR system we use at Team Element is so powerful, even for beginners. You do not need perfect zones or fancy data. You only need:

Mindset in Permission: Let today’s capacity be enough.
Nutrition for Now: Fuel before and after movement so your body knows it is safe to adapt.
Training with Awareness: Can you breathe? Can you relax your shoulders? Can you keep going without feeling panicked? That is your version of Zone 2.
Recovery as a Skill: Rest is not optional; it is part of the program.

You have not lost grit. You have not lost potential. You are simply learning how to access it again — slowly, intentionally, and in a way that supports your whole life, not just your workout.

You do not need to find fifth gear right now.
You only need to find your starting gear.

And trust me… that is more than enough.

In Conversation with  Experts

As athletes, as humans we embrace the push, the drive and the challenge. As athletes in perimenopause we want to fix the symptoms, our body even. Charlotte Thaarup brings a whole new way of being in this process. One that will truly bring joy into movement; into the push and the recovery. In this interview we talk about mindfulness and where it actually starts - in the body.

Specifically we get into:

• Dear Body: Re-establishing the connection to our bodies through pure self-love
• Learning to breathe, pause, and be mindful in life and sport
• Masculine energy vs feminine energy: Finding the Balance

Watch the video now! ⬇︎

Moving from Dominance of the Push to the Receiving of Retreat ... As athletes, as humans we embrace the push, the drive and the challenge. As athletes in perimenopause we want to fix the symptoms, our bo... youtu.be

 More Voices on Energy :

• Fix Midlife Fatigue: Severine Menem: How nutrition, lifestyle, and hormones can help women overcome fatigue and restore energy in perimenopause.