Building Bone Density and Bone Quality with Heavy Lifting

I've talked about how important bone density and bone quality are throughout our lives and how you can build and maintain bone health with heel drops and drop jumps. Another great way to build bone health is with heavy weight lifting. 

"Heavy" is the key word. For bone mineral density and bone quality to increase, you need to lift heavy weights. In my previous article about building bone healthy with jumping, I talked the higher the G forces produced, the more positive the bone adaptations will be. The same goes for strength training or weight lifting - the heavier the weight/higher the force, the more positive changes we will see in bones. 

The body responds to stimulus and that stimulus on the bones must be high for the body to feel the need to build more bone density and bone quality. Light weight lifting will not trigger much if any bone response. How heavy must you lift? Studies have shown 85% 1 RM is the number we want to aim for. This means, you want to lift 85% of your maximum weight you can complete one repetition with. 

Let's take a deadlift for example. If you can lift 100 kilograms (kg) once and only once then this is your one repetition maximum or 1 RM. For maximum bone response, you would want to lift 85% of that or 85 kg as many times as you can in your workouts. Most people can lift 85% of their 1 RM about 5 times. So in your workout, you might do 2 sets of 5 repetitions with 85 kg for the deadlift. 

What exercises are best for building bone? We want to do exercises that will put load on your leg bones, pelvis, spine, and arms. Compound movements are best because we can do higher weight with compound movements, put demand on more parts of our body at once, and thus make the workouts shorter and more effective. The best exercises might be deadlifts, back squats, and overhead press. These produce force on the leg bones, pelvis, spine, and arms. Anyone experienced with Olympic lifts could use these also as they are great compound movements that can be done with high loads. 

Heavy weight lifting has been shown to be effective even with post-menopausal women and women and and men with osteoporosis. Heavy weight training did not increase the risk of fractures and decreased thoracic kyphosis - both very promising findings. Even for those people who have suffered spinal fractures, exercise was deemed as safe and did not increase the risk of another fracture. 

The key is to learn proper lifting technique and start with light weights and build up over a period of time. 

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References: 
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28975661/
​2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35577538/
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32300705/
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32935171/
5. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30091064/