Table of Contents
Today’s lesson will cover the osteoporosis exercise guidelines and fundamental principles of an effective osteoporosis exercise program.
These principles will benefit you if you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, osteopenia, or low bone density.
Today’s exercise is a strength training exercise that challenges the muscles and bones of your hips.
Osteoporosis Exercise Guidelines
Studies have shown that effective osteoporosis exercise programs incorporate the following four principles:
- Exercise needs to be site specific. In other words, if you want to increase bone density in your arm, you should do exercises that stress or target the arm.
- The weight needs to be heavy enough to challenge you. Passive exercise is not effective.
- Weight-bearing exercise is more effective than non-weight-bearing exercise for building bone.
- Change and novelty is important. Keep changing your exercise patterns to challenge your bones.
Guideline 1: Site Specific
One of the first guidelines is that exercises need to be site-specific. By that, I mean that if you want to build the bones in your arms, you need to stress the muscles in your arms so that the muscles are pulling on the bone, and hence you build bone in the arms.
Similarly, if you want to stress the muscles in your hip and the bones in your hips, you need to do exercises that specifically target your hip. Exercises to consider to strengthen the hips are squats and lunges.
Guideline 2: Weights Need to be Heavy
The second principle that studies have shown needed for bone building is that the weight needs to be heavy. You need to feel challenged when you’re lifting that weight.
Guideline 3: Weight Bearing More Effective Than Non Weight Bearing Exercises
The third principle is that weight bearing is far more effective than non-weight bearing exercises when it comes to bone building.
Guideline 4: Exercises Need to be Novel
The fourth principle is that our skeletal system benefits from change. If you do the same thing day in and day out, your muscles and the bones they are attached to get the same stress each time. Switching things up provides new strain directions for your muscles and bones.
Today's Exercise
The video includes step-by-step instructions as well as suggested modifications to allow you to make the exercise feel right for you.
This exercise is best started without a weight.
When you’re ready, a soft ankle with a longer strap will allow you to adjust it to the width you need to succeed.
Core Strength Foundation
We don’t have enough time in today’s tutorial to go into each of the four principles in great detail, but what I’d like to go through right now is the foundation that these principles need to build on.
As you know, yoga and Pilates are very popular these days and for good reason. They’re built on a strong foundation of breathing and activation of your deep abdominals or using your core.
A couple of the key principles that are essential to a bone building program are:
- Proper breathing technique.
- Activation of your deep abdominals or incorporating your deep abdominal muscles into an exercise program.
Those two elements alone are very essential to the foundation of a strength training program. In lesson seven I will go into more detail on Core Strength and Osteoporosis. This is an important, but often overlooked, part of a comprehensive exercise program. I cover core strength for people with osteoporosis in my book Strengthen Your Core … more on that later!
20 Minute Sample Workout
This 27 minute sample workout is taken from the Beginner level title for Stronger Bones, Stronger Body. Give it a try! You can find the complete Stronger Bones, Stronger Body — Beginner Level here.
Tomorrow’s Lesson • Comprehensive Exercise Program Components
Well, that’s all for today and tomorrow we’re going to be covering the components of a comprehensive exercise program when it comes to osteoporosis and low bone density. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Comments