In this powerful episode, fitness expert Holly Perkins breaks down the critical importance of strength training for bone health, revealing seven key exercises that can dramatically improve bone density and overall physical resilience.

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Topics Covered:

• Bone Health Fundamentals 
• Common Misconceptions About Bone Density 
• 7 Best Exercises for Bone Density 
• Safe Progression of Impact Exercises

Resources Mentioned:

• Listen to the first 46 episodes of Holly Perkins Health Podcast HERE
• Check out The Body Composition Project HERE
• Transcripts can be found on the official blog page for this episode at hollyperkins.com/blog

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Find me on Instagram: @hollyperkins

Learn more on my website: hollyperkins.com

Connect with me on Facebook: facebook.com/HollyPerkinsFitness/

Disclaimer: Content and information as part of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast is for general interest, education, and entertainment purposes only. The use of information on this podcast or materials or products linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.

If you were to get laser-focused on strength training three times per week to the point where you consider it your frontline defense against osteoporosis, you'd improve both bone strength and density. If you want to stay out of the rocking chair and in life for all of your years ahead, these seven exercises are the best place to start. So keep listening. Hello and welcome! If you are new around here, I'm Holly Perkins, and I believe that out of all of the things that you could focus on to improve your health, nothing matters more than protecting the architecture of your body. And that means reinforcing your muscles and bones. After 30 years in practice and as many years pouring through the research, I've discovered that the practice of strength training can influence so many aspects of your health and how you show up in life in general. It's like, to me, the ultimate way to multitask because it impacts all areas of your life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. So, getting this strength training reduces your risk of heart attack, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

It reduces aches, pains, arthritic conditions, and discomfort. Strength training pretty much eliminates fatigue and improves both stamina and resiliency. It improves hormone regulation. It teaches your body to better handle stress and inflammation. That's a big one. Strength training is the most powerful way to improve bone density and bone strength. How surprised would you be if you learned that strength training is as important as nutrition? And I would argue it's maybe even more important when it comes to protecting your bones. Something I hear a lot from the women who come to me for coaching is the desire to stay healthy and vibrant into their 50s and 60s and beyond and a fear of going out as a parent did. And maybe you can relate to this if you've ever had a parent decline faster than they should have. You know what I'm talking about. It's tragic, and it's a terrifying way to live. And it is so hard as a bystander to watch. I'd argue it's no way to live. And yet, what are you doing right now, honestly, to set yourself up for strength and vitality in the years ahead?

I'm curious if you're not including the seven exercises that I shared today. You'll want to get on it ASAP because they are powerful and, I would argue, non-negotiable. And in my opinion, every single woman should be incorporating these every single week. In this episode, you'll learn how bone cells improve the architecture of your skeleton and two common misconceptions women make when it comes to their bones. For powerful strength exercises that you should include every week, three highly specific exercises create the safe impact that your bone cells need in order to be triggered. Guess what? You can become stronger and healthier than you are right now, even if you're already super fit. The truth is, you could be a wee bit better, right? Every muscle fiber that you build will pay off Tenfold, maybe 100fold down the road. I promise. I've worked with too many women at this point to let you fool yourself into believing that you're stuck where you are or that you can't heal whatever struggles you're currently facing.

If you want to be strong, happy, and resilient, it is yours for the taking. Especially if you add the seven exercises that I shared today. Several years ago, my doctor, whom I adore, suggested that I get my baseline Dexa scan for bone density, given my commitment to fitness. I intuitively knew that bone density was something that I just didn't need to worry about, so I procrastinated on getting my scan. Now, this is interesting because I do have a significant family history of osteoporosis. My mom's ultimate decline started with a fractured vertebra. When she sat up in bed, that's how brittle her bones were. That's bad. Despite this, I just knew I would never have to worry about my bone health. Of all the things that I might have to confront, I think it's also noteworthy that I only took calcium supplements for maybe a year or two. In my 20s and for most of my 30s and 40s, I completely avoided dairy. I just never really worried about my bone density at all, in all the ways I've always eaten very, very well.

However, I never prioritized specific vitamins and minerals for bone health. So finally, last year, my doctor, being the great doctor that she is, put her foot down and said that I had to go get my Dexa scan so that we at least have a baseline for the future. So, of course, I got it. It turns out my intuition was spot on. My T score is 1.0 standard deviation above the mean for 20 to 40-year-old women. That's insane. I was 51 at the time, maybe 52. I don't remember 52, 51, something like that. My Z score, which is the age-matched control, is 1.5 standard deviations above the mean. A lot of women I know at my age are already getting osteopenia diagnoses, and I'm way above the average, so my bone density is way better than women my age. And oh, by the way, better than women who were 20 years old. So how could this be true when, number one, I have a significant family history of osteoporosis?

And number two, I have a health history of an autoimmune disorder, which we're pretty certain goes way back to my 20s. And if you don't know, autoimmune autoimmune disease tends to negatively affect bone health. So what's the scoop? I believe my clearly superior bone health is due to my 30-plus years of strength training, on top of the 10 years or so as an avid runner in my 20s. The stuff that I'm sharing today matters, and it's powerful when it comes to getting better bone density because it goes beyond strength training. I mentioned running because it is a powerful form of exercise when it comes to promoting bone remodeling, and that's because running is an impact exercise. More on this in a bit. That's right. Impact exercises are often overlooked when we talk about improving bone density. In truth, none of my colleagues are talking about it, and a lot of the strong medical voices out there that we hear aren't really talking about impact exercises, nor should they be, because it's not their specialty.

It's mine. Impact exercises are probably the most effective way to build better bones, but it is not as simple as going out and starting to run or doing box jumps. So please stay to the end of this episode to hear my suggestions because it's critical. So, let's get into this. As always, any exercise is better than none when it comes to your health. So promise me, please and yourself that you are strength training to some capacity every week. Anything is better than nothing, my friend. Now, that is not permission to allow excuses because if I'm actually going to help you and we're going to invest this time together right now to complete this episode, you've also got to know that you must be approaching your strength training workouts with intention, determination, and commitment. Because, as I always say, if your life depends on it because it does. And to drive that home a bit more, do you realize that your attitude and your mood right now, while you're listening to this, is being influenced by your physical conditioning and your strength training? If you are in peak physical health and fitness right now, there's a good chance you have a better attitude, and you're happier right now.

How much does that influence your life? If nothing else? Even if we don't talk about your risk of disease or if you're in pain right now. Imagine how much better your life would be if you always felt good. That is a big reason why I've stayed so committed to this conversation in my career because I know when I feel good, I change the world, and I also know how crippling my days are when I don't feel well. And when you look at the research and you apply it as a practice, we know strength training of all physical activity is the most powerful way to influence these things in your life. So, when it comes to using strength training to protect your bone health, there are a few common misconceptions that I want to go over first. And the first is that walking, in general, weight-bearing exercise, helps bone density. It doesn't. The idea first came around when research looked at the elderly and improving their life quality. And I'm talking people 75 and up. If you take someone who is very deconditioned or very inactive, walking a weight bearing activity can improve bone health because the stimulus walking is above and beyond their current training status.

So early research really looked at people who were severely deconditioned and hanging out in their rocking chairs all day long. So therefore a bodyweight activity just moving about their house is a significant stimulus. But for you and me, it's not. I want to give you some bone science to really drive this home. Bone is constantly renewed during adulthood when bone mass and architecture are maintained by what's called bone remodeling. Remodeling involves bone resorption and bone formation, a continuous process of bone cells. Removing and replacing bone tissue and an imbalance in the remodeling process can cause osteoporosis. The bone cells involved in remodeling are osteoclasts, which remove bone, and osteoblasts, which produce new bone. Isn't that crazy, too, kind of cells? One is gobbling up and breaking down your bone right now so that the other can rebuild it. It's long been established that bone tissue accommodates stress that is imposed on it through loading mechanisms, like when your resistance training during physical activity. Mechanical forces that act on bone are generated mainly from two sources: loads from impact with the ground, which are called ground reaction forces, and loads from skeletal muscle contractions, muscle forces, or muscle joint forces.

Ground reaction forces are generated from contact between the body and the surface due to gravitation, whereas muscle loads result from muscle contractions, creating a force that is transmitted to the bone through the tendons. But here's the thing: remodeling only occurs when the stimulus, those reaction forces, is above and beyond the day-to-day loading forces. So this means you have to expose your muscles and bones to forces that are greater than their current ability. And if you're currently active or living an otherwise normal life, your muscles and bones have already adapted to the quote-unquote, the stress of daily activities. This is why walking alone and even moderate strength training isn't enough to create the stimulus for bone cell activity. You've got to work harder than that if you want to improve bone density. So, in other words, those 8 or 10,000 steps that you're taking each day are good. They're great for you, but they're not going to actually improve your bone density from where you are now unless you do something more or more strenuous than that. Up next, you'll hear one other common mistake I see, and then I'll share the seven best exercises for better bone density.

But first, so there's one other misconception I want to cover before I reveal the seven exercises. The vast majority of stories in the media focus on nutrition as the best practice for preventing osteopenia or osteoporosis. Most of the time, if you open up a headline that talks about better bones, it's going to talk mostly about nutrition. The conversation is currently owned by nutritionists and doctors who don't have much experience or training in actual physical conditioning. They may be looking at the research, but they've never really been in the field working with humans. So therefore you hear a lot about calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D when it comes to improving your bones. Now listen, nutrition is a powerful piece of strong bones, don't get me wrong. But if you're generally healthy and you have been for most of your life, I'd argue that nutrition is the lesser of the two things to focus on. Strength training is that other thing. It's a good idea to get lab work to confirm your levels and keep an eye on your vitamin D, calcium, magnesium, etc., and you should be getting your Dexa scan for bone density.

And you should be mindful of eating as healthy as possible because nutrition is important. An interesting side note here. Did you know that your bone mass is pretty much set and established by the age of 30? So your bone mass today really has more to do with your formative years and not your nutrition yesterday or last year or anything as an adult. Is it a good idea to eat well and get important minerals? Yes, of course, but this is a big one. So listen, in optimizing your nutrition, i.e., getting calcium, magnesium, and vitamins K and D is not powerful enough to prevent osteoporosis. You can eat yogurt until the cows come home. And if you're not using progressive resistance activity, your bones will continue to slowly deteriorate. Therefore, nutrition is simply a good practice. And yes, you need to do it to slow the progression of bone deterioration, but it may not help proactively improve bone density, and strength training is at least as important as nutrition. I'd argue it's more important. Strength training is a powerful stimulus because of the tugging on the bone, and it really does need to be some definition of strenuous or challenging because there's a direct relationship between the exertion of your muscles and the stimulus to those bone cells.

Greater exertion equals greater stimulation of bone-forming osteoblast cells. Several theories have been proposed to explain this loading mechanism and one of the most recognized is the mechanistic theory by Harold Frost. He asserted that, quote, bone strength and mass normally adapt to the largest voluntary loads on bones. The loads come from muscles, not body weight. End quote. This is why my standard for programming is to use weight loads where the last two reps are hard, and you cannot do more than 12 reps for working sets. You need to be working hard for those last few reps, so much so that you literally can't keep perfect form, and you need to be adding heavier weight loads over time to your core foundational Movements, including the ones that I'm going to reveal next. So, to give you an example, if you're the person who is lifting weights as you should, and sometimes you finish those 12 reps, and you could have kept going, or maybe you're doing 15 reps, but the last couple of reps, you're just kind of you're getting through them.

I see this all the time when clients come to me. They think that just lifting weights alone will do it. And so someone on social media suggested they do 12 to 15 reps, so they pick up a weight load, they do their 15 reps and they get them done. What I'm saying is, yes, the act of strength training alone, just picking up weights, is beneficial. But if you really want to have an impact on your health, building muscle and your bone density, it's the quality of the reps that matters. It's not just the activity. It's the stimulus. You've got to be creating an environment where there's a real stimulus of the muscle tugging against the bonds, and that means those weight loads have to be challenging. The takeaway here is that you must learn excellent technique first at lower weight loads and then gradually increase the challenge of these exercises so that you cannot maintain perfect technique for those last 2 to 3 reps. My most successful clients know that their technique should only be about 70% perfect by the end of the set, and that is determined by your weight load.

The goal is always perfect technique, but your weight loads should make it so that you can't keep that perfect technique, but only for the last few reps. So, let's review the seven best exercises for better bone density. Number one, squats and squats of all kinds. I'm talking about sumo squats, barbell back squats, front squats, and goblet squats. All of the variations are great, and these are good because you're loading your own bodyweight, right? It is a weight-bearing exercise, but you're adding to that by picking up dumbbells, kettlebells, or a barbell. These movement patterns are what are considered complex, closed kinetic chain exercises that involve movement at numerous joints. This is why they're powerful. This is how you get the greatest load and stress on your body, your muscles, and your bones. And it's in contrast to single joint exercises like a bicep curl. So with the bicep curl, which is still a valid exercise, you would never be picking up, let's say 70 or £80 dumbbell. Right? So in order for us to really have this big stimulus on your body, we've got to call upon the big muscle groups, and we've got to call upon them in a way where they have to work together across numerous joints your hips, your knees, your ankles, your feet, your back, your shoulders, your neck.

All the more joints that are involved, the more the stimulus is going to impact your bones. Number two, my favorite walking lunges. If you know me, you know I am such a fierce proponent of walking lunges. They are so good in so many different ways. Again, it's a bodyweight complex compound movement that involves many joints. While I do love extended time, body weight, and walking lunges for general athleticism, I talk about this a lot: just using your body weight and slowly and gradually working up to ten, 15, or 20 minutes of non-stop bodyweight walking lunges provided you of good technique will change your life. I love it! Now, that is a very different practice than what we're talking about here today. In this case, you need to be loading your walking lunges. You can use a dumbbell in each hand, a light barbell across your shoulders, or a kettlebell held at your chest. In this case, we are doing it where it's rep-based, and you would be doing somewhere from 20 to 30 total number of steps.

Where again, those last few steps are so hard that your technique is starting to break down, and you can't control it. Number three deadlift. Did you think you'd get out of a deadlift? Nope. Not today. You'll find a version of a deadlift in every program that I write. And this is because I believe every person, no matter your age, should be learning this fundamental movement pattern. Your back isn't bad because of deadlifts or squats. Your back is bad because you haven't been deadlifting and squatting. Again, listen, technique is everything. If I could only tell all the stories of the clients that I've worked with who have come to me with a bad back, a herniated disc injury at their hip, and when we've refined their techniques so that they are squatting and deadlifting properly, we see that that back pain goes away and that they are better for it. Now, learning technique is critical, as I've said. If your doctor says don't deadlift, I invite you to ask him or her. So, how do you propose that I lift heavy things off the floor? As I get older, would you do me a favor? If your doctor says that, please throw that back at them because there's no answer to it.

The answer would be to do other exercises. No other exercise trains you appropriately to pick things up off the floor. So, as you get older, what are you going to do? Just not lift things like a bag of groceries, or your garbage, or your £35 pet, or maybe a child or a grandchild? You've got to reinforce your activities of daily living with this movement, even if you have to learn it with a very light bar or dumbbells or even begin with just your body weight. We've got to strengthen this movement pattern so that you can keep up with all of those activities of daily living as you get older. Number four step-ups. Step ups are really unique because they are what's considered a level change exercise. And it's truly one of a kind because there really aren't any other exercises that we do in traditional strength training where you load your body and you're moving from one level to a higher one. There just isn't any other exercise that you can do in a strengthening set. Then step-ups.

And how do you expect to climb stairs when you're older? If you're not strengthening this movement pattern now, if you don't use it, you lose it. If you already have issues going up and down stairs, this is your cue to number one. Learn the right technique if you have any issues. And then number two, pick up some weights so that you can actually reinforce the movement pattern and be safe on stairs as you get older. Okay. Moving on. The next three exercises are highly specific, and I like to say medicinal. They should be measured and adopted very gradually. These exercises lead to injuries fast if you are not ready for them or if you introduce them too quickly. So please take my advice and start very slowly with these. They're great, but the vast majority of people out there are doing them incorrectly and at the wrong time. As the research indicates, impact exercises are fabulous because they cause the greatest amount of stress on your bones. And this is a double-edged sword because, on the one hand, they're great for bone density.

On the other hand, they are tricky, and they can cause injury. So a lot of trainer smart trainers and our doctors would say, oh gosh, you should not be doing that because the rate of injury is high. That is true. But if you do it my way and you listen up and you're very, very prescriptive with this, this is the best thing that you can be doing for your bones. Hands down, there is not an expert out there that would argue with me on this. So, let me reveal the moves, and then I'm going to give you a simple formula so that you can introduce these safely and effectively. So please don't take these three exercises and run off and think you know better than me. You don't stay to the end because I've got some really important prescriptions for you so that you do them, as I said, safely and effectively. Okay. First, jumping rope. Listen up. Personally, I really like mimicking a jumping rope movement without using an actual rope, okay? Most people don't have the skills to jump rope continuously, and so it just becomes frustrating, and it becomes erratic, and you're stopping, and you're starting.

And that really does increase your risk of injury. We need some consistency here. So instead, back in my exercise DVD days, if you know me from way back then, I found that simply pretending to jump rope works way better, and it's a whole lot more fun. By the way, you can literally just hop from one foot to the other, like your jumping rope or even a double foot hop, and then move your hands as if you're holding a jump rope. So, just pretend to jump rope without the rope. It works amazingly. Next exercise, apply a metric bound. Now, this move mimics skipping, but instead of having to go outside and cover some ground and skip across a distance, which you could do with great exercise, you could do it. This allows you to do it in place. It involves a step and then an upward bound or hop that looks like a one-sided skip, basically. And what you do is you step and knee lift, and then you repeat that a number of times on one side, repeated on the other side.

So, if you have a hard time visualizing this, you can find my video tutorial on my Women's Strength Nation YouTube page or on the web page for this episode on my website. The next exercise is a lateral skater jump. For this one, you have to be really careful. Promise me that you don't roll an ankle and that you don't catch the floor and kind of slip. Or, as I said, roll an ankle. So you want to make sure that you're using a low profile athletic shoe, something that's flat, not a running shoe, not a walking shoe, but. Oh, by the way, you really shouldn't be strength training and walking and running shoes anyway. You should be using a low profile, low heel-toe ratio shoe that's built for cross-training or strength training. Now, what you're going to do is you're going to start with your feet together, and you're going to take a big leap or jump from side to side, covering 3 to 4ft in between. And it looks like a speed skating movement.

So you drop your body weight low so that your knees are bent, and you take a big jump or step out to the side. Tap down with the opposite foot and then return. You're going lateral again. If it's hard to visualize here. Go to my Women's Strength Nation YouTube channel and just search Lateral skater jumps and plyometric Bound. The video tutorials are there. Or, again, visit my website, go to the blog, find this episode and the link will be there. These three exercises, or what's called plyometrics. You've probably heard that before and they all involve leaping, bounding, jumping. They are impact exercises, and they are great for your bones. In years past, you probably heard, oh, the impact is bad for your body, like running, right? Sure, bad technique. Running is bad for your joints, but great technique. Impact exercises are great for your bones. But please hear me loud and clear. Please listen up. Please make a note. In my field, we. While those of us who are educated and know what we're doing, we reserve these moves only for the most advanced athletes who are well-trained and who have progressed up to the complexity of these moves.

It's like the last exercise a person should be doing once they're in peak fitness, and they're so good for bone density that I've found a way that you can incorporate them without having to be a professional athlete and without having to delay it down the road. Now, you really should have a solid foundation of good strength and conditioning and just good athleticism in general before adding these in. And I have had clients start these exercises at the beginning part of their journey following my prescription, and it improved their bone density as per their Dexa scan. I've watched this work with real data and feedback from my clients. You cannot and should not just start doing these exercises tomorrow for ten minutes. Holly Perkins said jumping rope is good, so I'm going to go do it for 30 minutes. Please do not do that. You will get injured. It is my biggest complaint about jumping rope. These moves are way more advanced and complex than they look. I think I've driven at home, have I? You have to be careful if you jump into them too quickly.

Haha. Pun intended. You risk overtraining very fast. Muscle strains, ligament issues, and joint injuries of the feet, ankles, lower leg, and knees have seen a lot of plantar fasciitis. Achilles tendon issues and calf strains come from people who just started doing plyometric bounding in their exercise classes because their uneducated instructor just had them start doing squat jumps when they weren't trained for it. Please trust me on this. The best thing is to pick one bounding plyometric movement and perform it for 30 only 1 to 2 times per week to begin. You got that gentle, low-intensity, easy. Expose your body to it very carefully, cautiously, in a limited way for 30 once a week and then gradually after a couple of weeks, 30 two times per week, very gradually a couple weeks later. You can then progress from there to 2 to 3 times per week. Then you're going to increase your time to one minute, 1 to 2 times per week, and then one minute, 2 to 3 times per week. I am talking at a snail's pace here.

If you do this, it will work. You will love it, you will become fit, and you will be injury-free. You need to gradually work up first on frequency, so 30s once a week to twice a week to three times a week and that might take you two months. Then progress from 30s to one minute to 90s to two minutes and so on. Your increasing and 32nd intervals every couple of weeks. Got it. And you really don't need to do these for ten minutes straight. That's not the goal here. We're not boxers. If you're a boxer, great. And you want to jump rope for 30 minutes or 60 minutes, that's fine. But I don't think that's you. Most likely. If it is, then you already know what you're doing. 3 to 4 minutes, three times per week, is the goal down the road, and it works great. It's all you need. Once you get good at it, you can then increase the effort, the enthusiasm, and the explosiveness of the repetition.

So I'm talking like 4 or 5 months down the road. Once you're like, okay, Holly, I got it. I'm up to two minutes, three times a week this one exercise. Then what you do is you start to increase how explosively, how enthusiastically you're performing the movement. Then, you can start to add another movement or a different movement, but you literally have to treat each of these exercises separately and distinctly. Makes sense. Promise me that you will follow these suggestions here because I can tell you I am not going to be sympathetic if you call me with an injury, I warned you. Please be careful. And also, don't let me scare you. I just want to be emphatic here because oftentimes, I tell people what to do. I tell them what not to do. And then I heard from them down the road, and they did exactly what I told them not to do. So, if you just follow this prescription, it's going to work. It works great. I've seen it with my clients.

You just got to do it all. Stop. Deal? Deal. And there you have it. The seven best exercises for better bone density. One last note. Remember how I mentioned earlier in the episode that your bone mass is largely established in your formative years? That doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can do about it now. You can absolutely slow the rate of bone loss after menopause. And oh, by the way, there is bone loss. No matter what you do. The aim here is to slow the loss and then actually improve your bone density. With these practices, it can be done. I've got the Dexa scans of my clients to prove it. So stay positive, take action, and know that your habits today influence your happiness tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please remember you can get free access to my four week Strength Without Stress program totally for free. Simply rate and review this episode right now wherever you're listening. Grab a screenshot and then send it to me over at Holley Perkins Comm Forward Slash review.

Just upload it, and then you'll get immediate access to this program for free forever. This is a limited-time offer. Go get it now and stay tuned for another brand-new episode on Tuesday of next week.