5 easy ways to add weight-bearing movement into daily life for stronger bones as we age
As we age, the body’s process of regenerating old bone slows down and we start to lose bone faster than we can build it. The rate of this decrease is about 1 to 3% per year after the age of 50 with some reports stating this can start as early as 35. Women can lose up to 20% of their bone density in the 5 -7 years after menopause and the risk of osteoporosis becomes a real issue for many. I state these as facts to motivate, rather than statistics to fear, as there's a LOT we can do to counteract it.
During midlife and onwards, it’s highly important to prioritise weight-bearing movements. Investing in some dumbbells to do some weight training at home, hitting the gym to use theirs or going to a weights class, are great ways to build this into your week, but there’s more you can do without it taking large chunks of time!
I talk a lot about the importance of just walking more. It’s not always thought of as a weight-bearing movement, but it really is beneficial for our bones, as well as the myriad of other benefits. Adding a loaded backpack or weighted vest can also help to increase these benefits.
Why does weight bearing activity help strengthen bone?
Any activities that create ‘stress’ (this being a good form of stress and necessary) on bones, by them being pushed and pulled by muscles around them and holding moving weight around whilst doing so, make bones respond by stimulating their growth.
If you’re not keen on the thought of lifting weights or going to a gym or haven’t got anywhere near you, these are 5, perhaps more unexpected, movements that are weight-bearing and can be easily prioritised in daily life, so you know you’re getting strength work regularly whilst you go about your life.
They key here being the word ‘prioritised’ as we can all too easily go about our lives avoiding these or them becoming a rare occurrence. It’s up to us to make that choice, that you may see as pushing a little more into discomfort, but when you know you’re doing so for the good of your health and strength in both the short and long run, it feels like a more rewarding experience.
Climbing stairs or hills
People often overlook stairs as a powerful way of resisting gravity with your own bodyweight. Whether you're climbing the stairs or walking up a hill (or even climbing up onto things), the action of ‘pushing’ your body upwards engages the muscles of your lower body and core particularly, which adds the necessary increased ‘stress’ for bone growth.
2. Carrying groceries or heavy bags
Daily activities like carrying shopping bags are natural and easy ways to engage in weight-bearing movements. The forces created by the additional load require lots of often lesser used muscle groups to stabilise your body and again make the body work harder.
Why not sometimes take 2 shopping baskets instead of a small shopping trolley, or choose a bag with a strap across the body instead of a wheeled suitcase.
Seeing these options as beneficial for your body in the long run, rather than avoiding the discomfort in the short run, will reward you with strength to do other things you might find yourself struggling with over time.
The added benefit of carrying more is that it not only improves your upper body strength, but also your grip strength, which is not only connected to longevity, but also blooming useful for opening jar lids unaided!
3. Getting up and down to the ground
Lowering our entire body weight, in a (hopefully!) controlled manner to the ground and especially pushing back up again is a key skill that keeps us doing a long list of other things. It’s also super beneficial for building both our bone density and muscle mass in the lower body and upper body when you use a method that requires you to lean on an arm.
I talk about countless ways to add this into daily life (and if you haven’t read my FREE E-book, ‘Making the ground your friend for life’ yet, then click here to be sent your copy and get started).
A good example of when you need to get down to the ground is gardening and the other activities involved like digging, pulling weeds, or lifting bags of compost involve lifting and bearing weight as part of the tasks you’re doing anyway. It’s a ‘workout’ in itself over a few hours!
4. Dancing!
While people might think of dancing as a purely ‘cardiovascular’ challenge, dancing requires moving around upright, as well as many movements that involve balancing, getting down low and back up and lunging, which are all weight-bearing motions. I’m not suggesting you go to the level that we see in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ (a guilty secret favourite of mine!), but having a bounce and jiggle in the kitchen to your favourite tunes will be doing your bones more good than you realise, not to mention your balance and coordination!
5. Balancing on one leg
When we balance all our weight on one leg, we’re putting more stress on that one leg than when our weight is distributed over the wider hip width base of 2 legs, hence why walking is a weight-bearing movement as up to 80% of our gait pattern is using a single leg. Any balancing movement (check out this YouTube video for some balancing ideas or have a listen to this podcast on the subject of adding balancing practise into daily life) requires your muscles to engage and stabilise your body, which not only strengthens the ankles, legs and core, it also improves joint stability and, again, increases that necessary stress on our bones. This can be added into daily life by putting on underwear, lower half clothing and shoes standing upright and taking a bit longer to stay on one leg each time…adding balancing time to things we do every day, so then you’re challenging your balance and building strength all whilst doing daily tasks.
How we move in daily life can really make a difference
These relatively simple activities are so easily integrated naturally into daily life. They all offer significant weight-bearing benefits that don’t require a gym or special equipment and therefore making the choice to move intentionally to build our strength in these types of ways, every day, feels like an easy win to me.
If this makes sense to you and you want to learn more ways to add healthy beneficial movement naturally into daily life, you’ll love the mindset shift of immersing yourself in my 5 Day Course, ‘Move more naturally to live better’ (now and in the future!). You can start today with the Self-Paced version or sign up to hear when the next Live course is starting. Each day there’s a short podcast style audio lesson (up to 15 minutes) and a coached movement session (approx 30 minutes) to work through in order. A previous course attendee Judith said, “I really enjoyed the course and would thoroughly recommend it as a way to start thinking differently about movement.”
