Bone is like any other part of your body, if you stress it, it responds, it becomes stronger. If you don’t stress it, the ongoing balance between bone buildup and breakdown shifts toward net loss of thickness and with that flexibility. The result is – weak bone you can easily break.
Strength training can make a big difference in keeping bones strong and healthy. Whether you actually gain bone or hold on to it depend on how much you stress, or overload the bone.
If you can get anything from this article, this is it: Strength training preserves bone better than walking or running.
Load is more important than repetitions, so a small number of repetitions with a heavy load stimulates bone formation more than walking or jogging, where you can do thousands of repetition but the load is light.
How much is enough? You shouldn’t be able to do more than 15 repetitions in 2 or 3 set of exercise. On the other hand, if you can’t do 8 repetitions, it’s too much of a load.
To build a stronger bones, try one of my two simple and effective strength training plans:
Workout plan #1 – simple, effective and safe all-body-machine-resistance workout