Bone health cannot be achieved overnight. It is a long process. Physical exercise is an effective way to make your bones healthy. There are many types of different exercises, all extend different health benefits. The two major exercises for bone health are weight-bearing and strength training. These exercises are site-specific. For example, if you practice jogging and running, it may work on your legs and spine but not your arms and wrist.
Here are a few exercises that are extremely beneficial for bone health –
- Flexibility exercises:
They involve a full range of motion of the joints. Pilates and Yoga are two quality flexibility exercise that helps to exert joints and give strength to them. Different postures of Yoga involve flexion, extension and rotation of our joints. Regular practice of them makes the joint flexible and improves bone strength too.
- Weight training:
Lifting weight needs a considerable use of the muscles, joints and bones involved. They are excellent to impart strength to the bones. Your body has to resist the weight making them work out extensively. Both weight-bearing and non-weight-bearing bones are worked out during weight training. But before any kind of weight training one must follow the expert advice.
- Aerobic exercises:
Aerobic exercise involves a series of physical activities that needs more oxygen, thus you breathe more oxygen into your system and ultimately better health. You follow a rhythm of movements and these movements cause a good workout for bones and joints. For instance, jogging or brisk walking focuses on the joints and bones of the legs specifically. Similarly, dancing is another extremely beneficial exercise.
- Sports:
Although every sport requires physical stretching, a few of them like tennis and squash, exert your whole body. You have to jump, move suddenly, use force and be involved mentally as well in them. Tennis is a resistance plus cardiovascular exercise where you need to specifically work your upper extremity in coordination with the lower extremity. Both Tennis and Squash are high impact exercises but less than running and jumping.
Apart from them, you can also consider physical activities that involve a sudden change of direction, have high velocity, requires balancing and have a high to moderate impact on your bones. This type of physical activity helps to gain bone strength and improves bone density.
To conclude, we can say that to improve bone and joint strength one has to exercise regularly with a nutritious diet. Exercises like weight training, aerobics, sports, etc exert our joints and make them move to their maximum limit. In long term, this practice results in better bone health and improved flexibility of joints.
