Building stronger bones is the number one reason I hear why my female clients who are over the age of 50 exercise.
As much as we think exercise is all about losing weight and aesthetics, many women are realizing how important it is for longevity and quality of life, and wrapped up in that is the strength of their bones.
But, as much as Google tries to be helpful with guiding us all on what we need to be doing in our lives, when it comes to using your workouts to build stronger bones, Dr. Google has it wrong.
In fact, when I took the time to bypass Dr. Google and go straight to actual research papers, it turns out that almost everything that is recommended online has been proven time and again to not be effective for improving the strength of your bones.
So what does improve the strength of your bones?
There is only one thing that has been shown to increase bone density from an exercise perspective, and that is force.
You need to be applying lots of force to your body and bones to tell your bones they need to get stronger. Without force, there is nothing signaling your body that a change needs to be made.
But, there are two main ways that force can be applied to effectively create stronger bones.
The first is through heavy resistance training multiple times a week.
And when I say heavy, I mean heavy.
Not “kind of challenging after I do 10 reps and then my muscles start to burn a bit by rep 15 so I stop so I don’t hurt myself”.
Challenging to the point where you are like, “Holy **** can I even lift this one time?!?” from the very get go.
Now, what many women immediately start to think when they read a statement like that is, “Nope. If I try to lift that heavy I am going to hurt myself,” but that just isn’t true.
In fact, there are four steps that every lady needs to take when she lifts weights to make sure she stays 100% pain- and injury-free, no matter how heavy she is lifting.
The first step is to stay within your symptom-free full range of motion.
The second step is to control your moving and non-moving segments.
The third step is to move slowly.
And the fourth step is to focus on squeezing your muscles.
Each of these steps has been covered in more detail in this post here.
These steps are also what we teach you to follow within every workout of the Exercise For Life Membership, to which you can get a free 30-day trial by signing up here.
The second way to apply lots of force to your body is through high-impact training.
Utilizing exercises such as stomping, marching, box jumps, and depth jumps has been shown time and again in research papers to help build stronger bones.
Now, if you are reading that and thinking, “There’s no way my knees/hips/back would handle that…”, this is where Muscle Activation Techniques® comes into play.
Muscle Activation Techniques®, or MAT®, is a systematic process of identifying where you have weak and inhibited muscles in your body and then addressing those muscles directly to strengthen them.
When your muscles are stronger, your joints become better supported, allowing you to do high impact activities without your joints getting bothered. I have had many women who felt like they would be too weak or in too much pain to do the high impact exercises that are necessary to build bone, but once we got their muscles functioning better using MAT®, they did not have any issues stomping or jumping down from boxes.
If you would like to try out MAT® for yourself, you can find a time to get on my schedule by clicking here.
When it comes to building stronger bones, the name of the game is force. You need high amounts of force put through your bones on a consistent basis in order for them to build stronger.
The only two ways that have been shown to be effective at this are heavy resistance training and high-impact training.
But, the name of the game with each of these activities is consistency and longevity. You need to be able to do these activities often and for the rest of your life, which means you need to do them in ways that feel good and don’t leave you injured.
Using the four Exercise For Life Principles will keep you safe while you exercise, while doing Muscle Activation Techniques® will make sure your body is as prepared for your activities as it can be and help you tolerate all the stress of those activities without issues.
If you have any questions about this, be sure to reach out! I am easily accessible on Instagram at @julcates.
You got this!
In strength and health,
Julie
Julie Cates is an experienced, certified, and insured National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Certified Personal Trainer and mastery level Muscle Activation Techniques® (MAT®) Rx Specialist (MATRx).
She is one of 88 certified mastery level Resistance Training Specialists® (RTSm) in the world. This combination makes her style of training impactful and still preventative and restorative of joint and muscle issues and pain that are common with exercise.
Julie specializes in working with women 50 and over. Specifically, her main focus is working with women with bone density loss, muscle loss, Osteopenia, and Osteoporosis.
Julie has incredible experience working with brand new exercisers. Very specific types and styles of exercises are needed for restoring and maintaining bone density, and Julie guides her clients through these in a pain-free way.
She is also well experienced in helping women exercise even with various joint, bone, systemic, and neurological diagnoses. Julie is definitely your go-to personal trainer for women with Osteoporosis!