Strength Training for stronger bones

Spice Fitness and I want to have a little talk today about osteoporosis. Now I'm a nurse and a fitness instructor and it's amazing how many people you find as they get older with osteoporosis that have never really taken care of their bones and that is to get them stronger that really suffer. So the more ritual they become you know the worse it gets and you actually get scared to move and you get scared to actually walk around in case you fall because you know that if you have osteoporosis that you probably have a likely high likelihood of fracturing a bone when you do fall so it's quite scary.

So what is osteoporosis? Well it's a condition where the bones become weak and fragile and so you know osteoporosis occurs when the bone loses minerals such as calcium faster than the body can replace it and this is often a hereditary trait and occurs a lot more we get towards menopause because our estrogen levels drop and therefore we tend to lose more so it occurs to older women kind of in the menopausal age a lot more than what it does when you're younger and of course when we don't replace you know our calcium and stuff then it means that we get a loss of bone thickness and that's so that's why they call it bone density and that's therefore it makes the bones more brittle so they have a higher risk of breaks and the most common areas of osteoporosis are the wrists the hips and the spine and it's really interesting I had a client once who was diagnosed she actually came to me for strength training because she had osteoporosis in her spine quite a bit in her spine and quite a bit in her hips and she was quite concerned about that quite a very thin lady as well and so she knew that she needed strength training and believe me she did even if not for the osteoporosis just general strength training because her body was very deconditioned so it had sat for many hours in a chair doing her work every day and hadn't done a lot in the way of building up muscle and so she was really thrilled that after a year of training with us two to three times a week of strength training she thought that her hip bone density would have gone up but she was really surprised that her spine bone density had also gone up as well so it was fantastic so being able to lift weights and even when we strength train we do a certain amount of plyometrics where we jump so anything that's weight bearing or where you actually make those bones have to hold up we do small small jumps of course you're not going to do that with somebody straight away with severe osteoporosis but being able to weight bear on those bones gives those bones a lot more density a lot more strength so it's a great thing and you won't often know that you have osteoporosis until you get a fracture and often people will have a fall it may not be a fall though it may be a tiny little hit of something and they'll get a fracture and that's when you need to kind of think okay have i got osteoporosis and there are scans that can be done as well and most councils will run them for free and osteopenia if you've been diagnosed with osteopenia that is pre-osteoporosis so it's where the bone density has started to get less but it's not into full osteoporosis yet so i think that's a great time if you know you're in osteopenia or even with osteoporosis like my client did then you can do a lot to make that better lots more stable for yourself and so when you lose bone density you know females tend to lose it quicker because of our estrogen drops quite quickly after menopause and so we will lose our bone density quite quickly whereas men will still get osteoporosis but because their testosterone levels gradually come down and don't have this sudden slump then they will tend to get osteoporosis a lot later on in life so that's why you see a lot more women menopausal age with osteoporosis so what does strength training do for you what is it actually what is the the benefit and bonus now quite a few of you with osteoporosis will be commenced on calcium vitamin d a number of different tablets to get your calcium put back into your bones but the what i love about it exercise is that we place stress on the bones so you won't get this stress placed on your bones if you're floating around in a pool for example that won't be great let full pool let's let's just look at pool going into a pool and swimming to your throat three times a week that gets nice mobility in your arms and your shoulders and stuff but because it's not a weight-bearing exercise it won't actually build up the the bone density so when stress is placed on the bones such as in weight training then a decline it so it can actually increase that bone density and stop the decline in in in loss and so yeah so we need weight-bearing exercise i see the results all the time and you know what if you have osteoporosis and you've never done strength training before imagine the benefits you'll get because it's not just building up your bone it's building up some muscle around the bone and this is a big thing i i'm always talking about arthritis and things because we get strong muscles if i got say some arthritis so not arthritis so osteoporosis in my say in my elbow for example um then i can't help but um support that by getting strong muscles right around the elbow if i can make my forearm stronger my bicep stronger my tricep stronger then you're supporting bone you're supporting joints so anything where you gain some muscle you are going to be supporting your joints and your bones so it's a really great thing to do and then what you want to be doing with that is progressive strength training over time so you may walk through my door and only be able to pick up one kilo weight or a two kilo weight that's fine that's all cool because as you go along you want to be progressing that so as we progress we build up bit bigger muscle and we get stronger bones um so also when it comes to strength training and fitness stuff we want to do um be doing sort of not low impact just walking around and doing a few arm moves we want to be doing moderate to high impact weight bearing exercises so we want to intermingle some jumps some skipping um and also some dancing dancing will be good in a more mild way but i also see that as low like a more low impact zone but if you can incorporate some jumps some skipping into your everyday strength training program that's going to be great for those bones they will love it um and balance exercises are really important as well if you've got osteoporosis because the last thing that you want to do is actually fall so you want to be doing some you know we've talked before about just standing on one leg holding onto a wall standing on one leg and then holding onto the wall at first and taking your hand off the wall if that becomes easy no try the other leg if that becomes too easy stand on one leg hold the wall close your eyes if you feel you can take your hand off the wall take your hand off the wall put your hand back on the wall so always be progressing yourself along and making that balance fantastic and and what it does you know people say will my balance ever get better absolutely yes you do more of that and you make these proprioceptors work so the the signals that go down from your brain down to your your body down to your muscles to tell you that you're slightly going to one side you do more of that you do some of that every day where you stand on one leg and make things unstable for yourself or even sitting on a fit ball with one leg up and one leg down you are giving yourself a whole lot of balance training and you cannot beat that it's fantastic so so yeah being able to stand on one leg is really important and also if we go for a fall well then you should be able to hold yourself up because you're so used to standing on one leg well i'm hoping that as you stand on one leg you get that leg stronger as well um how often should you be doing um strength training weight bearing exercises at least two to three times per week i see people get great results from strength training two times per week but then you add on to that three times per week and my clients who were the worst that started off with three times per week get great gains so a great thing to do and exercises i think i talked about it before should become more progressive over time make them more challenging so if you are not balanced enough to stand on one leg when you start but you get to a point where you can stand on one leg then start doing that always be challenging your body and challenging it to do more and more um if you have osteoporosis so i guess you want to be really mindful if you climb a mountain and the last half an hour is going over boulders where you've got a balance on one leg probably not a great idea but you can certainly be doing a lot for your body before you get to that point um and the other thing would be to say is to lift quickly rather than slowly in my strength training classes i'll alter things around so sometimes it's slow movements but you know just being able to move a bit bit more fast and i guess you know doing squats and and lunges and stuff with with a slight bit more um speed to them but also i don't think you can beat doing slower and faster so just intermingle that because you think when we do an exercise

slower than the time under tension so say if i had a weight in my hand and i'm doing a row where i lean forward and i'm doing a pull up with that elbow then if i do it slower i've got longer time under tension it's going to work my muscles don't get a rest until i come all the way back down again so if we're doing quick then we're actually working working rest working working rest so

then we're actually having more rest so i think you could easily intermingle slow and fast but have fun with that and if you've got osteoporosis i hope you're under a good consultant for that and yeah if you've not already started strength training this will boost your bone density no end so have a great time with it and see you for the next facebook live this is sheree at spicefitness.com see you next time