Building bone strength and density at a young age and holding on to it as we get older is something everyone should be concerned about. Hip replacements and wrist fractures are painful and debilitating at any age. While adequate nutrition, especially the nutrients calcium and vitamin D are essential in early development and throughout life, physical activity plays a complementary role in the development and maintenance of bone density. But what type of exercise is beneficial and how much?
Impact Exercise Rules
Even though weight training or resistance training has received substantial publicity in recent years, how you load the muscles and tendons, it seems, is more important than any categorical approach to exercise for bone health. Impact training in which a jolt is imparted to the tendon, muscle and bone complex seems to be the most effective. Tendons attach muscle to bones, and when you strike the ground – while running for example — each step imparts a compressive force to the bones through the tendons and muscles of the legs. This “impact” activity has been shown to be the best type of exercise for developing and maintaining bone density. However, it needs to be tempered with restraint to avoid injury, particularly starting out if you’ve not been active for many years or ever.
The Best and Worst Exercises for Preventing Osteoporosis
Best: running, jogging, volleyball, jumping, soccer, weight training, pump and step aerobics, fast walking.
Worst: cycling, swimming, rowing — or anything that’s not weight bearing, especially with impact.
A new study from the University of Missouri in Columbia, looked at the comparative bone density in a cross section of long-term runners, cyclists and weight trainers — and although both running and weight training had positive benefits, cycling was worst and running somewhat best of all when adjusted for lean body mass. That impact training is the most effective has been known or at least suspected for some time. For example, a study of male and female volleyball players showed a remarkable increase in bone mineral density at most sites, compared to sedentary controls, of between 6 and 18 percent in women and 27 percent in men. Landing with impact has definite advantages it seems.
It is worth pointing out that running doesn’t do much for your upper body bones, so a combination of impact exercise and weight training for upper and lower body is likely to be an optimum combination of exercise. Combination workouts like pump and step group aerobics where cardio is combined with impact and resistance exercises seems ideal. In addition, there are individual exercises like weighted lunges, bounce or clap pushups, box jumps and even jump squats that satisfy the definition of “impact” exercise but don’t include running. What you probably don’t’ want to do is participate in the ‘superslow’ strength training protocol where weights are moved very slowly. Power type exercises done explosively are more likely to provide that jolt required to stimulate bone production.
A word of warning. Impact exercise can cause injuries, especially if you don’t work up to it. Go easy on the plyometric type of exercising like bounding, jumping and high stepping until you get the muscle, tendon and ligament complex used to the stresses of this type of training. The same goes for running long distances in endurance running training.
How Much Do You Need?
If you follow the general exercise recommendation of exercise most days of the week and weight training at least twice each week, and you incorporate some impact exercise at most sessions, this should satisfy the requirements for exercise healthy bones — although as we age, hormonal status and the amount of bone placed in the “bone bank” during youth is likely to account for individual differences.
J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Mar;23(2):427-35. Lean body mass and weight-bearing activity in the prediction of bone mineral density in physically active men. Rector RS, Rogers R, Ruebel M, Widzer MO, Hinton PS.
Calbet JA, Díaz Herrera P, Rodríguez LP. High bone mineral density in male elite professional volleyball players. Osteoporos Int. 1999;10(6):468-74.
Alfredson H, Nordström P, Lorentzon R. Bone mass in female volleyball players: a comparison of total and regional bone mass in female volleyball players and nonactive females. Calcif Tissue Int. 1997 Apr;60(4):338-42.
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