Executive Summary
Perform weight-bearing, impact exercises for 20 minutes thrice a week. Skipping ropes, running, walking, stair-climbing, badminton and even yoga are found to help; cycling and swimming are not.
Add a day or two a week of strength training. Do squats, lunges, shoulder presses and other standard lifting exercises using 60% of your single-repetition maximum weight for 15 repetitions.
Prevent falls and injury by doing stretching, leg-strengthening and balancing exercises. Avoid activities, such as kickboxing and hiking, which may help your bones but have a risk of falls and fractures. Don’t do sharp forward- or backward-bending exercises.
Bones are living tissue that continuously undergo restructuring. When there is increased stress or impact in any bony region, certain bone cells deposit more minerals in that part to make it withstand the strain better. Various impact-oriented exercises give minor jerks to the whole skeleton, making the bones stronger.
Key Characteristics of Bone-Supportive Exercises
The University of Michigan scientists found three characteristics of exercises help in improving bone density:
- Strain Magnitude: The amount of force put on bones and muscles is called strain magnitude. The higher the strain, the more the bone build-up. Of course, this has to be within the load-bearing limit of the bone. Weight–lifting and gymnastics make bones stronger by applying significant strain.
- Strain Rate: The strain rate indicates how quickly the strain was applied. If pressure or stress is applied for a fraction of a second, such as a quick punch, the strain rate is higher. Fast-paced games like badminton and quick-movement activities like skipping ropes and plyometrics have high strain rates, which help bones become stronger.
- Strain Frequency: Strain frequency captures how often the impact is applied. If the stress is applied for an extended period, the better it is for the bones. A good example is running, which repeats the impact for a long duration.
Types of Exercises To Do
Three types of exercises fit the bill for improving bone health.
Impact Exercises
Many activities cause jarring in your body and are good for improving bones. For example, running or jogging, skipping rope, aerobic dancing, plyometrics and recreational sports such as tennis, badminton, volleyball and cricket.
If you already have a problem with bone density, or you are vulnerable to fractures, avoid very high–impact activities such as skipping rope and plyometrics. Go speed–walking instead of running. And no, boxing is not a great impact exercise for other reasons.
Weight-Bearing Exercises
In weight-bearing exercises, your body weight moves and lands on your skeleton, which improves bone density. Most impact exercises are weight-bearing, too. Staircase–climbing, hiking and trekking are not impact exercises but are weight-bearing.
If you have weaker bones, avoid activities that can lead to falls, such as rock climbing and trekking.
While swimming is a great exercise in general, it is not a weight-bearing one; so, don’t expect it to strengthen your bones. It is worse than sitting since the latter has your weight only on your posterior while the former has the entire immersed part of the body lifting it.
Video games, chess and bridge are not weight-bearing exercises though, technically speaking, your butt may be bearing your body weight.
Competitive–level cycling is found not to help with bone density improvement because cycling does not directly stress the bones. It is possible that traversing jerky trails may make mountain biking helpful for the bones but the risks of a fall and a fracture are quite high in such an endeavour.
Incidentally, commuting on potholed city roads must be helping our bones get strong. The Yin and Yang of our lives!
Yoga, A Special Case
Some people claim that yoga helps in bone building. Some studies have shown potential benefits, too. But it is unclear why it should, given its zero-impact nature.
One possible way yoga could help bones is by calming your mind and reducing the secretion of cortisol, which is a stress hormone that speeds up bone breakdown. In that case, the benefit of yoga would be for stressed individuals and not for everyone.
Strength–Training or Resistance Exercises
Do strength training, such as lifting weights. If you don’t have access to weights, you can perform exercises that use body weight; the goal is to perform muscle movement against any resistance, which is why they are also called resistance exercises.
These may seem to put pressure on muscles and not bones; however, the forces of muscles pulling against bones seem to be stimulating bone growth. Use full-body exercises that put pressure on the spine and hips, such as squats, lunges, deadlifts and shoulder presses.
The advantage of these exercises is the direct strain put on bones is less. So if one already has weak bones, these exercises may be better than impact exercises, to prevent possible fractures.
The bone–healthy exercises in reducing order of efficacy are:
- Jumping;
- Running;
- Weight training; and
- Walking.
Leg-strengthening, Balancing and Stretching Exercises
These are exercises that don’t make your bones stronger, but help prevent falls and thereby, fractures.
In my opinion, better balance, flexibility and leg–strength are as important as additional bone strength. In old age, a hip or leg fracture caused by a fall is one of the main causes of morbidity (suffering from illness) and mortality (death). Leg-muscle weakness and poor balance also lead to dependence on caregivers.
I like these 14 exercises for seniors that help improve leg–strength and sense of balance. They involve a few exercises that can be challenging for untrained leg muscles. When you perform these for the first few times, ask someone to be with you.
Types of Exercises To Avoid
If you have weak bones, don’t do exercises that involve excessive bending of your spine. For example, standing toe-touches, sit-ups or bending backwards. The pressure on the vertebrae rises too much in such exercises. Post-menopausal women should especially be careful, as excess vertebral pressure can crack them, increasing the chances of Dowager’s Hump, the forward bending of the spine commonly observed in older women.
Also, avoid exercises that have a high risk of falls or major impacts. For example, rock climbing and kickboxing.
The next section is technical and can be skipped unless you want scientific nuances of bone-protective exercises.
How Much ‘Exercise Load’ To Use
Scientists say that for optimal bone improvement, one should put about ten per cent of the force that is needed to fracture the bone. This value—called Minimal Essential Strain— forces certain bone cells (osteoblasts) to lay down new collagen at the site of bone strain. On this collagen matrix, calcium and other minerals are deposited later, strengthening the bone.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t know the amount of force required to fracture our bones, and we don’t want to find out. The take-home message is that the force needs to be above a certain minimal threshold to affect your bone density. That is why exercises that don’t put much pressure on the skeleton, like swimming or cycling, don’t help bones improve.
Unless you are training to win an Olympic medal, here is a simple advice on resistance training:
For most people, light weights and many repetitions are as effective as heavy weights and few repetitions, as long as the repetitions are done until failure—that is, you cannot do any additional repetition while maintaining a proper form. So to avoid the risk of injuries, you can use lighter weights with many repetitions.
Single Repetition Maximum (1RM)
Single repetition maximum or one-rep max—1RM—is the maximum amount of weight with which you can do one repetition in a lifting exercise. This weight is so heavy that you cannot perform a second repetition while maintaining proper form.
The following are equivalent for muscle growth, and perhaps for bone health:
- 90% of 1RM with 3—4 repetitions
- 80% of 1RM with 7—8 repetitions
- 70% of 1RM with 10—12 repetitions
- 60% of 1RM with 15—18 repetitions
As you age, not injuring yourself becomes more important than getting that six-pack abdomen. So, you should avoid muscle tears and ligament pulls that can come from training with heavy weights. Go for 60% of single rep max and do 15 to 18 repetitions. Your bones will also thank you for that.
How Much Time To Exercise
The standard exercise recommendation for overall health purposes is 150 minutes a week. The norm is 30 minutes for any 5 days a week. However, for bone health, even 12 to 20 minutes of weight-bearing exercises, thrice a week seem to help.
To Read More
- On this website: Everything you want to know about strong bones
- National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease, USA: Exercise for Your Bone Health
- HealthyBones Australia: Exercise & Bone Health
- Harvard Medical School: The best exercises for your bones
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons: Exercise and Bone Health
- Healthline: Living with Osteoporosis: 8 Exercises to Strengthen Your Bones
- Royal Osteoporosis Society: Exercise for bones
- WebMD: Weight-Bearing Exercise: 8 Workouts for Strong Bones
First Published on: 16th February 2024
Image Credit: senivpetro on Freepik
Last Updated on: 17th February 2024