Our bones have never been weaker – but here’s what you can do about it

Srength training protects you from all manner of maladies as you age. But it’s not just your muscles that need maintaining – it’s your bones too.

The way to do this is simple in theory: regularly load your bones by lifting weights, sprinting and jumping. But in application, there is a bit more nuance to it. And, ironically, the idea of sprinting and jumping explosively is enough to make many people run a mile.

Yet healthy bones are an integral part of a healthy body. They give us our shape, protect our vital organs and prevent us from suffering debilitating injuries. Bone is also an endocrine organ, secreting hormones that benefit myriad essential bodily systems, from brain health to metabolism.

For these reasons and more, everyone should know how to strengthen their bones. Here’s the expert’s advice about where to start.

Our bones are, on average, getting weaker, OsteoStrong founder and Unbreakable co-author Kyle Zagrodzky tells me.

“People born in 1900 would have been much stronger than people today,” he says. “Research found that teenagers in the 1970s and 1980s had about 10 per cent higher bone density than teenagers today.”

This, researchers hypothesised, could leave modern teens at greater risk of osteoporosis and fragility fractures as they grow older.

But why are our bones getting weaker? Because we lead increasingly sedentary lifestyles, Zagrodzky says. We are not moving as much, nor are we loading our bones as much, and we are missing out on the benefits of doing so.

“Human beings are, at our core, pleasure seekers and pain avoiders; calorie consumers and calorie conservers,” Zagrodzky explains.

“When there’s an abundance of food around and it’s convenient, people eat more and don’t move as much. On top of that, we’re editing activity out of society – I can get everything I need from my cell phone without leaving the house.”

“Bone is a living tissue, and our bodies are continuously getting rid of old bone cells and growing new bone in their place,” explains Professor Lucy Donaldson, director of research at Arthritis UK.

“Our bones are at their strongest in our teens and early 20s, when we’re getting the right nutrients. But from our mid-30s, the process of forming new bone tissue starts to slow down.

“As we get older our bones can get weaker, but when they become fragile this can lead to a condition called osteoporosis. People living with osteoporosis can break a bone from a relatively minor fall or accident.”

Recently, Professor Donaldson tells me, there has been a rise in bone problems in both adults and children due to three deficiencies: vitamin D, calcium and weight-bearing exercise. This can have several knock-on effects.

“Keeping your muscles and bones strong can mean you’re less likely to fall, and you’re less likely to break bones if you do have a fall,” she explains. Muscles pull on bones to spark movement. Without strong bones, freedom of movement falls away.

“Also, some bone conditions such as osteoporosis often develop without symptoms, so many people don’t realise they’re at risk until they break a bone after a minor fall or injury,” Professor Donaldson adds.

Zagrodzky also stresses the importance of bone’s role as an endocrine organ.

“It is an organ that, if it starts to fail and underperform, has a cascading effect of health issues that affect your brain, your metabolism, your pancreas, your testosterone levels and even your immunity,” he says.

This is largely down to a protein hormone called osteocalcin, which is “only generated when your bones receive enough force to trigger osteogenesis [the biological process of forming new bone]”.

Diet is the first factor to consider when building stronger bones.

“You need calcium to keep your bones strong, and you need vitamin D to allow the body to absorb calcium properly,” says Professor Donaldson.

“You can reach your daily calcium intake by drinking 200ml of milk or eating 40g of cheddar cheese – otherwise, a doctor may recommend taking calcium supplements.

“We get vitamin D from sunlight, but many people in the UK don’t get enough sun. Taking a vitamin D supplement in darker months, or all year round, can help build healthier bones.”

Eating an adequate amount of protein is also important for repairing bodily tissues and building new ones, Zagrodzky adds.

But the best diet in the world cannot trigger osteogenesis in isolation. It needs the right stimulus: weight-bearing exercise. Think of it like a letter – if your diet is the contents, exercise is the address scribbled on the front, telling you where the letter needs to go.

Zagrodzky points to a couple of studies to demonstrate this.

Research from 1985 found that, while disuse could lead bones to lose mass, sufficient mechanical strain (or loading and use) could trigger the opposite.

A 2012 study from the University of Bristol added to this. It studied bone mineral density (BMD) in the hips of adolescents and concluded: “We found that >4.2g impacts [forces greater than 4.2 times your body weight] were positively related to hip BMD, suggesting that high-impact activities like running produce BMD gains of the lower limb.

“In contrast, impacts below this threshold may have little benefit, suggesting that strains associated with moderately high-impact activities such as jogging have relatively little effect on BMD.”

In short: if you want to improve bone strength, you have to load your bones sufficiently.

“If you want to trigger osteogenesis, your bones are not listening out for repetition or a certain type of exercise, they’re listening out for force,” Zagrodzky summarises. “Unless you trigger a certain amount of force, nothing happens. A threshold has to be met.”

If bones weaken as we age, it can be tempting to protect them by avoiding physical activity altogether. But Professor Donaldson suggests the opposite approach.

“Our research shows that keeping active as we get older helps maintain bone health,” she says. “Weight-bearing or high-impact exercise such as hopping will put pressure through your bones and will improve bone strength and mineral density.”

However, she adds, “while exercise is very helpful to prevent osteoporosis, it is important to consult a healthcare professional if you already live with the condition”. Arthritis UK’s exercising with arthritis tips can be helpful for approaching this.

Similar is true with osteoarthritis – a condition many put down to excessive exercise.

“One study found that a previous knee injury could increase the risk of osteoarthritis threefold,” Professor Donaldson continues. “As reported in Arthritis UK’s State of MSK 2025, regular physical activity can reduce falls by 77 per cent and hip fractures by 24 per cent.

“Research also found that long periods of bed rest, or not moving at all, can quickly have major negative effects on health, but these effects can be restored through movement.”

As Zagrodzky puts it: “Anything that can be deconditioned can be reconditioned.”

“It gets harder as you get older because your cells don’t function as well and your telomeres are getting shorter,” he continues. “But generally speaking, you can recondition your body.

“I like to think of myself as a butler for my future self. Everything I do for my body today will pay dividends later.”

However, due to the threshold for building bone – outlined in the section above – it can be difficult to do so through lower-impact exercises such as walking, jogging, Pilates, yoga and many more. That’s not to say these activities don’t offer plenty of other health benefits, but they aren’t an effective route to more robust bones.

Two possible options are jumping or sprinting. Doing this once per week can deliver meaningful benefits to your bones. But this does not mean light hops on the spot

“If you’re jumping, you probably need to jump and land hard [to trigger adaptations],” Zagrodzky says. “The challenge for people over 40 or 50 is they may have joint or back pain that makes this difficult. Impact is hard on your joints but great for the bones.”

Strength training is another option which can be easier on the body – again, provided you are lifting sufficiently heavy weights. More on this below.

“These are my five favourite exercises for building stronger bones, with progressions for all abilities,” says Ed Haynes, an experienced strength coach and founder of Coastal Fitness.

“The principle underpinning all of these exercises is simple: bone is living tissue, and it adapts to the demands you place on it. To tell your body to lay down new bone, you need to load it with a stimulus greater than what it’s used to.

“The magic ingredient with all of them is progressive overload – gradually nudging the weight up over weeks and months. One or two strength training sessions per week is plenty if you’re starting out, and you should always prioritise learning good technique – ideally with a coach – before lifting heavier loads.”

“This is my top exercise for stronger bones because it loads the spine and hips under a heavy external weight, and those are two of the most important sites for fracture prevention as we age,” Haynes explains. “The movement is essentially picking something heavy up off the floor with a flat back and a braced core – everyone should be doing some form of deadlifting.

“You don’t need to lift enormous amounts on day one. And if you struggle with the mobility to lift from the floor without rounding your back, Romanian deadlifts or deadlifting the barbell from an elevated surface are great alternatives that can allow you to load the movement safely.”

Progression: Start by deadlifting a kettlebell or dumbbell from a raised surface, then lower the surface over time, then progress to a barbell and add weight.

“Squats load the spine, hips and thigh bones through a large range of motion,” says Haynes. “The goblet variation (above) is accessible and teaches good positioning.I love the target of completing at least 40 per cent of your bodyweight for 20 reps before moving to a barbell. If you don’t feel comfortable squatting, a machine leg press performed through a full range of motion is a great alternative that offers more stability.

Progression: Start with a bodyweight sit-to-stand from a chair, then move on to a goblet squat, and finally a barbell squat, lifting progressively heavier loads.

“Pressing a weight loads the wrists, forearms and upper body, and builds the pushing strength that helps people brace or catch themselves if they fall,” says Haynes.

“I prefer the dumbbell bench press over an overhead press as it removes the mobility limitations many people have while pressing overhead. I also favour dumbbells over a barbell here as they demand more stability and allow for a greater range of motion, even if you can’t load the movement quite as heavily.”

Progression: Start with lighter dumbbells and lift them with a controlled tempo, then gradually progress to heavier dumbbells over time.

“Simply picking up a heavy weight in each hand and walking offers plenty of benefits,” Haynes says. “It loads the entire skeleton (the spine, hips and grip) under real, meaningful weight, and it’s about as safe and intuitive as strength training gets. It’s also a brilliant introduction for anyone who feels intimidated by barbell work.”

Progression: Carry a dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand over a manageable distance to begin with. Then, you can increase the load you are carrying and the distance you are walking over time. You can later load the spine even more by carrying a sandbag in a bear hug position, in front of the stomach.

“The pull-up demands so much stability from the entire body while loading the arms, shoulders and upper back,” says Haynes. “If you’re starting out, a cable pull-down is a great place to build the initial strength.”

Progression: Start with a light cable pull-down, then progress the weight you are moving before graduating to assisted or eccentric (slow lowering) pull-ups, full pull-ups, then weighted pull-ups.