Exercise Your Bones

Bones needs sunlight to be healthy, they need good nutrition and they need exercise. It is well established that most of our bone is laid down during adolescents when we play a vigorous sport and jump and fall about. If you missed out on this kind of activity then you may have to be extra careful as you age.
 

But it is recommended, regardless of your sporting history, to get weight bearing exercise to maintain and if you are lucky, improve bone density with age. The kinds of exercise recommended would be familiar to you already. The kinds of things we do at the studio all the time.

Bone is built after impact, so each time you strike your foot on the ground when walking the bones in the foot are encouraged to toughen up. High impact is far better than low impact but you do what you can!

Resistance training with body weight and added weights has been proven with research to positively improve bone health. The increased load on the skeleton from moving heavy things around is the catalyst in increasing bone density. As tendon moves on bone it also stimulates the bone to grow and a greater degree of force encourages more growth more rapidly. Perfomed more often the response is also increased. So get out the Arnold book of body building for women (yes I have a copy!!!!) and get cracking.

High intensity high impact work has also been shown to be particularly beneficial for the spine and the pelvis and the lower limbs.  So that step box move you have been avoiding which has the little leap in it… it’s good for you provided you have no soft tissue reasons not to go for it. Research done about 10 years ago with tennis players showed that the dominant arm of tennis players had 10 to 20% greater bone density than the non dominant arm. So impact forces act positively on our bone health.

Getting fifteen minutes at least, four times a week of weight bearing activity is the current recommendation. Activities such as resistance training, medium impact aerobic work, skipping and jumping exercises like dancing. Some of these might not be suitable, so pick those things you can manage physically and co-ordinate into your timetable. Getting outdoor activity should also be part of your plan to increase vitamin D production. See Osteoporsis Australia for more info.

The final part of this physical puzzle is balance. I work in a nursing home with a falls prevention program and have worked with older folk in the past through the Living Longer Living Stroner program. We also incorporate balance work every week and set homework! Practice single leg movements like lunges, standing on one foot, use a fit ball regularly as part of your workouts. Having good balance relies on a number of factors including muscle strength and that relates to reactions. But these things are trainable, so use it or loose it.