I will never forget the day I saw an elderly woman fall on the sidewalk in front of me. She fractured her wrist and I saw where the bone had punctured the skin. I vowed, then and there, to always, always take care of my bones. I take my calcium every day, along with Vitamin D and Magnesium. In addition to those supplements, though, bones need weight bearing exercise in order to stay strong.
“The exercise must place a load on the bone that’s heavy enough and different enough to stimulate a bone response,” says Robyn Stuhr, American Council on Exercise spokesperson and clinical exercise physiologist. Osteoporosis, or weakening of the bones, most commonly afflicts elderly women, but 20 percent of diagnosed cases are in males and osteoporosis occurs in people in every age. The most commonly affected bones are the spine, hip and wrist and thankfully, those are areas that can easily be strengthened.
The best way to strengthen your bones is with weight bearing exercises, especially by using your own body weight. There is a catch, though – easy workouts won’t cut it. Your bones need weight bearing exercises, and you need to exercise as many of your bones as possible. For example, squats are a wonderful weight bearing exercise – but they do nothing for your wrists. In order to strengthen your wrists, you need to do exercises that involve them. Other examples of weight bearing exercises are push ups, planks and pull ups.
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