Mish Wright has added a powerful new offering to her acclaimed women’s health education repertoire. The Menopause Training Matrix has leapt off the page and taken form in workshops addressing a critical gap in fitness professional education, creating practical applications to assist clients experiencing menopause.

These workshops take fitness professionals through five distinct symptom categories, providing targeted training adaptations for each. Wright specifically focuses on body composition changes during the initial workshop, the most common concern bringing women to fitness professionals. By putting this content online and structuring workshops for in-person practice, Wright creates a space where fitness professionals can develop crucial communication skills and action plans to meet their clients where they’re at.

Cultivating Conversations That Matter

The Menopause Training Matrix tackles two essential communication challenges head-on. First, Wright teaches fitness professionals how to broach the topic of menopause sensitively, recognizing that societal ageism makes this conversation particularly delicate. Second, she provides frameworks for discussing body shape and metabolic health without triggering harmful diet culture messaging.

Wright’s innovative ALPS method (Ask, Listen, Prioritize, Strategy) conveys a real shift in approach. Rather than immediately jumping to solutions, the method emphasizes first understanding client concerns through active listening. “Trainers get to telling their clients at the top of the mountain, ‘You need to do this, you need to do that,’” Wright explains. When actually, you need to ask and listen, then prioritize one thing.”

This approach acknowledges the complex reality that menopausal women face. While strength training receives significant attention, Wright emphasizes that the solution for body composition changes during menopause requires greater nuance. The workshops provide fitness professionals with practical tools, including a symptom checklist that can be customized with their personal branding.

Strategies Beyond Lifting Heavy

Wright challenges the simplistic “just lift heavy” narrative dominating menopause fitness discussions.

This perspective addresses a critical issue: about half of aging women discontinue physical activity for various reasons. Between caring for aging parents, raising teenagers, career demands, relationship needs, and poor sleep, exercise often falls to the bottom of their priority list. “We need to have a better message than just ‘lift heavy shit,'” Wright asserts, “because if you don’t have the foundation, why are you going to go lift heavy? That’s not going to help you.”

The Menopause Training Matrix also includes education about Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT), providing fitness professionals with accurate information to counteract common misconceptions that might prevent clients from seeking appropriate medical support. Mish 

Final Thoughts

The Menopause Training Matrix solves a pain point in women’s fitness education, addressing the needs of clients and professionals with equal consideration. By focusing on communication skills alongside technical knowledge, Wright creates a foundation for meaningful client relationships that can change the trajectory of women’s fitness.

This approach acknowledges the lived experience of women navigating perimenopause and menopause—a journey marked by physiological changes and often complicated by decades of internalized diet culture messaging. As Wright expands these workshops internationally, including sessions in Melbourne, Sydney, New Zealand, and Brisbane (and hopes of making it to the United States soon), she brings a voice of practical wisdom to a conversation that is too often reduced to oversimplified solutions or ignored entirely.

About Elisa Edelstein
Elisa is a curious and versatile writer, carving her niche in the health and wellness industry since 2015. Her lens is rooted in real world experience as a personal trainer and competitive bodybuilder and extended out of the gym and on to the page as a writer where she is able to combine her passions for empowering others, promoting wellness, and the power of the written word.