bird wrote:

John Duffield wrote:The weights and running will only affect load bearing bones.

Really? Do you know that? Or are you assuming? I don't have time to research, but I would think that if you are lifting and your body is doing things to increase bone density, it would have a more systemic effect than just load bearing bones.
Anyone know more either way?

Absolutely true. It's a very important aspect of weight training in football as a means to prevent injury. Not only do muscles and tendons increase their load bearing capacity, but bones respond this way too and not just the load bearing ones. My old trainer used to say that there was no better way to make your forearms bigger than doing squats. Generally speaking the larger the muscle or bone being worked the more systemic the effect will be. Smaller muscles and bone will have little to no effect on a whole. Still, the last I read about this there were some conflicting opinions.

It is important that significant weight be applied, for instance, circuit training with light weights will have a minimum impact on bone density, but running or prolonged exposure to high impact sports (like football) will have a significant effect on bone density and strength.

Orthopedists have been using resistance training to assist the elderly with bone mass issues for some time as well.

Also, it could be the steroids.

In 2005, I was Mountain Biking in the Pyrenees with a group of Brits. Out of nine of us, 3 broke collarbones. Cited, as evidence of Cycling leading to low Bone Density in the New York Times article above, is the high incidence of broken collarbones among cyclists.

Certainly the collarbones don't take much of a load cycling. Maybe even doing anything else. It's interesting and worthy of further research, to find which bones aren't load bearing and thereby unable to be protected with exercise.

Of course all of these studies seem to conclude that more research is needed.

My PT had an article on the wall in his office with an x-ray pic of femurs from an olympic runner and an olympic swimmer. The runner's femur bone was about 5 times bigger than the swimmers. I asked the PT about it and he said it's the impact. Sports that involve running and jumping put great stress on the body and force the bones to grow stronger over time.

A related article:
http://www.osteopenia3.com/bone-density-exercises.html

John Duffield wrote:In 2005, I was Mountain Biking in the Pyrenees with a group of Brits. Out of nine of us, 3 broke collarbones. Cited, as evidence of Cycling leading to low Bone Density in the New York Times article above, is the high incidence of broken collarbones among cyclists.

Certainly the collarbones don't take much of a load cycling. Maybe even doing anything else. It's interesting and worthy of further research, to find which bones aren't load bearing and thereby unable to be protected with exercise.

Of course all of these studies seem to conclude that more research is needed.

Maybe the broken collarbones biking have something to do with going over the handlebars at high speed and landing on concrete?

The so-called benefit of drinking milk for calcium may be a falacy. True, contains calcium. But after weaning, our enzyme compliment changes. Do we therefore expect ourselves to go into the nearest field and find an udder. Osteoporosis has a link to body pH. Dietary intake of dairy, fats and proteins lower pH to acid, which depletes deposited calcium. Unless you are a Maasai tribesman, then, in this respect, milk may do us more harm than good.

DANNYC wrote:My PT had an article on the wall in his office with an x-ray pic of femurs from an olympic runner and an olympic swimmer. The runner's femur bone was about 5 times bigger than the swimmers. I asked the PT about it and he said it's the impact. Sports that involve running and jumping put great stress on the body and force the bones to grow stronger over time.

A related article:
http://www.osteopenia3.com/bone-density-exercises.html

Yeah, I'll go for that. Impact causes micro fractures, which then knit over with a denser bone matrix - similar to adding more strutts in a bridge. Martial arts such as cement block smashing, gives rise to an incredibly dense matrix. From my previous decades of impact racket sports, leaping, bounding, my bones became so dense that I could not float in water - regardless of what fat % I had.

Snowslogger wrote:

John Duffield wrote:In 2005, I was Mountain Biking in the Pyrenees with a group of Brits. Out of nine of us, 3 broke collarbones. Cited, as evidence of Cycling leading to low Bone Density in the New York Times article above, is the high incidence of broken collarbones among cyclists.

Certainly the collarbones don't take much of a load cycling. Maybe even doing anything else. It's interesting and worthy of further research, to find which bones aren't load bearing and thereby unable to be protected with exercise.

Of course all of these studies seem to conclude that more research is needed.

Maybe the broken collarbones biking have something to do with going over the handlebars at high speed and landing on concrete?

Perhaps in the cycle races in the cycle article from the Times. In the Pyrynees however, they were high mountain meadows.

In any case, I've learned enough here, to tweak my training with more load bearing and more impact. I'm convinced that the benefits of denser bones far outweigh the downsides.

John Duffield wrote:...But I don't know what percentage of bone density I'm increasing...

At your age, you are not increasing your bone density. There is no way to increase your bone density at your age, you're several decades too late to be thinking about increasing your bone density. All you can do now is slow the rate of loss of bone density.

They key is to maximally increase bone density when you're young - 2nd and 3rd decades of life. After that, it's just a game of slowing the loss of calcium. Diet and weight-bearing exercises are the key.

John Duffield wrote:In 2005, I was Mountain Biking in the Pyrenees with a group of Brits. Out of nine of us, 3 broke collarbones.

Jesus, that's a rough trip! I hope you got a refund from the tour company.

Regarding the timing of fluids during exercise activities...just how old a fart are you? (I don't typically bring water with me on trail runs of less than an hour, so I'm wondering if I fall into the young fart or old fart category.)

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:

John Duffield wrote:...But I don't know what percentage of bone density I'm increasing...

At your age, you are not increasing your bone density. There is no way to increase your bone density at your age, you're several decades too late to be thinking about increasing your bone density. All you can do now is slow the rate of loss of bone density.

They key is to maximally increase bone density when you're young - 2nd and 3rd decades of life. After that, it's just a game of slowing the loss of calcium. Diet and weight-bearing exercises are the key.

Studies say different. http://www.naturalnews.com/010528.html

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:

John Duffield wrote:...But I don't know what percentage of bone density I'm increasing...

At your age, you are not increasing your bone density. There is no way to increase your bone density at your age, you're several decades too late to be thinking about increasing your bone density. All you can do now is slow the rate of loss of bone density.

They key is to maximally increase bone density when you're young - 2nd and 3rd decades of life. After that, it's just a game of slowing the loss of calcium. Diet and weight-bearing exercises are the key.

Similar opinions:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20210695
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19453205

The Ca/D front:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19840876

and skepticism on the Ca/D front:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19850735

There are about 300 related articles on PubMed.

knoback wrote: I like your first advice: lift heavy shit. Work your heart and lungs. Hone your balance and technique. Realize that if you go hard, no matter what you do , you may get hurt. If you decide it's worth it, then go.

+ 1

I like this as well. When I weight train, I can feel it going throughout my body.

I think all of us accept we run a higher incidence of getting banged up. Simply the way this sport is. A few years ago, my wife was reviewing a life insurance policy she was thinking of taking out on me. It had three exclusions, Mountain Climbing, SCUBA Diving and Sky Diving. I'd recently parachuted off a cliff in France and I routinely do the other two. She laughed and threw it away. I'm sure everyone here has had similar. So we feel it's worth it. That said, we don't want to go down easily.

knoback is right. You can't generalize results from one group to another.

If I've learned anything in my profession of medicine, what you think is a logical explanation or a logical presumption, generally isn't.

knoback wrote:

NancyHands wrote:Absolutely true. It's a very important aspect of weight training in football as a means to prevent injury. Not only do muscles and tendons increase their load bearing capacity, but bones respond this way too and not just the load bearing ones. My old trainer used to say that there was no better way to make your forearms bigger than doing squats. Generally speaking the larger the muscle or bone being worked the more systemic the effect will be. Smaller muscles and bone will have little to no effect on a whole. Still, the last I read about this there were some conflicting opinions.

It is important that significant weight be applied, for instance, circuit training with light weights will have a minimum impact on bone density, but running or prolonged exposure to high impact sports (like football) will have a significant effect on bone density and strength.

Orthopedists have been using resistance training to assist the elderly with bone mass issues for some time as well.

Evidence please. I'd love to be wrong about this, but I have not seen anything in the literature to suggest a significant systemic effect. As a jack of all trades, master of none it is quite possible I've just missed it. But the proposed mechanism for forearm fracture reduction in the elderly with lower extremity exercise is improvement in muscle strength and balance precisely because there isn't a global improvement in bone density that would account for it. Your forearms are getting bigger because they are working to hold the bar across your shoulders, not because your quads are getting bigger and bringing them along for the ride.

When I speak it's as if jewels of knowledge are falling from the sky. You need but gather them to attain total enlightenment. There is your evidence…


I will find some for you. There are huge hormonal effects from lifting weights, particularly when working large muscle groups. This causes other muscles outside of those worked to be effected, so even if you were using a leg press machine without any grip necessary it would effect your forearms. That said, true squats are better as you are working far more large muscles - back, obloquies and many other core groups as well as your forearms. Your forearms would grow to some degree under great systemic pressure, but from a practical standpoint it’s more accurate to say they will respond much better to resistance training when larger muscles are under heavy resistance load. Again, it’s important that the load be heavy and not anaerobic.

For the record I’m 6’4” and used to weigh 285 with about 10% body fat.

I now weigh 215 at about 20% body fat.