Bone strength

Exercise to Make your Bones Strong!

Bones are active tissues that provide a firm support structure. Bones are responsive to changes and they even have the capability to grow and regenerate themselves if they are damaged. Bone mass is partially dependent on hormones and nutrition, as well as a person's physical activity. The bone mass and structure actually start to decline after age 25.

A person is more likely to develop osteoporosis if he or she has an inactive lifestyle. Osteoporosis occurs as a result of bone mineral density and bone mass decreasing to extremely low levels. This disease is most common in post-menopausal women, but there have been more occurrences in elderly men in recent years. As a result of a decrease in bone strength, fractures and breaks occur because the forces that would usually be absorbed by the skeleton become compromised. Most of the fractures occur in the spine and hip.

In order to strengthen your bones, you need to engage in activities that will stimulate muscle growth because this also strengthens and stimulates the growth of bones and their connective tissues. These types of exercises are referred to as weight bearing exercises.

Before beginning an exercise program, obtain the advice of a reputable fitness professional who can help you develop a program tailored to your needs.

The program should include placing greater-than-normal demands on your muscles; performing exercises that affect your bones; and selecting different exercises which will improve your various muscle groups.

You need to challenge your muscle groups by placing greater-than-normal demands on them. Walking around the block may be enough to stimulate and build bones, if you had been leading an inactive lifestyle. Your bones react to the extent of exercise, therefore, you need to keep increasing the resistance by progressing to more difficult levels as you exercise. Start slowly and increase the resistance and length of your exercise program. If you are concerned that you may have low bone mass, you should have a bone scan done before starting an exercise program.

Choose exercises that will directly affect your target bones, such as a squat, in which you start with a standing position and bend from the hips, knees and ankles. This procedure will obviously put more force on your spine than a wrist curl, which flexes and extends your wrist. You can strengthen your upper skeleton by performing a shoulder press wherein you press your weight up over your head.

If you have just begun your weight bearing exercise program, perform exercises for certain body parts. By doing so, you will increase your kinesthetic (body part awareness) and condition and stimulate your muscles. After you have familiarized yourself with strengthening exercises, you can incorporate variety into your exercise program.

By varying your exercises, you can select different exercises that involve several muscle groups; as opposed to isolation exercises that stabilize the rest of your body. Isolating exercises involve only one muscle group, and you will not obtain synergistic and stabilizing benefits as you would with structural exercises. Structural exercises involve several muscles groups and involve exercises such as squats that benefit the spinal skeleton and bench presses and overhead presses which strengthen the upper limbs and allow you to lift heavier loads.

Making Bones Stronger