04/04/2026
Resistance training for stronger bones! 🦴🏋🏼♂️
These are general principles to guide resistance training but it’s important to recognise some additional points:
- The adaptability of bone varies significantly across our lifetime so we are likely to see a very different response in an adolescent athlete than a masters runner
- The research varies too, some is based in children, some in college students and some is in postmenopausal populations so we need to be careful generalising the results.
- It’s likely that the stimulus will need to be greater in those already involved in osteogenic activities and sports. mentioned this in a great recent post on the ‘Pro-bone’ study. Swimmers and cyclists gained bone mass with plyometrics but soccer players didn’t as the stimulus didn’t exceed the typical load of their sport.
- Lastly, bone health needs must be met for the bone to adapt to load. In particular energy availability is key. For more on this see the excellent paper below from on RED-S and resistance training
Reference:
Blagrove RC, Brooke-Wavell K, Plateau CR, Nahman C, Hassan A, Stellingwerff T. The Role of Musculoskeletal Training During Return to Performance Following Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2024 Jun 4;19(7):623-628. doi: 10.1123/ijspp.2023-0532. PMID: 38834182.
