Bone health is one of the most important parts to our body but a hidden mystery for many people. Until you fall and break a bone or get a fracture you assume everything is great. At that time most people feel it is too late to do anything, and this is far from the truth. Fortunately, there are many exercise options for increasing bone density, both weight bearing and muscle strengthening.
1.) Walking, this is probably by far the easiest one to start with. Just put on some comfortable shoes and start for a walk for 10-15 minutes or as much as you feel you can accomplish. Take it easy your first trip out and build upon the success don't push yourself to being so exhausted as this will make it harder for the body to repair itself. Overtime you can absolutely increase your time on your walks.
2.) To make this even better and more scenic go for a hike. There are some great websites to help give you ideas on places to go that are ranked from easy to hard. Here is one of my favorite hiking apps to use, All Trails. Start with ones that are close that are maybe 1/2 mile to a mile. See how you do then start to broaden your search and increase the distance and difficulty.
3.) Body Weight strength training. This is using your own body weight to exercise and build muscle strength. I promise you, by doing this you won't become the Hulk. It will just put a strain on your muscles which will help them support your bones better and it helps your bones get more blood flow to increase bone density.
4.) Use strength training equipment (machines). These are great pieces of equipment that help you to understand form and technique but also you will put more strain on your muscles and bones. All of which will build strength and bone density. These exercises will help bone density the quickest out of the above choices.
5.) The final one would be to use free weights. This is going to come in the form of dumbbells or barbells. These will put more of a challenge onto your exercise program because it throws in more stability for you. Adding in stability is one of the most beneficial things to do with any strengthening program.
Most personal trainers at gyms can give you suggestions on how to do exercises if you don't know how to do. They even can help you build out a program to get you back the lost bone density quicker. Just make sure that your trainer has experience with this and has a strong knowledge on when enough is enough. Jillian Michels is wonderful but for bone density her workouts might not benefit you as much as you would think.
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