6 Osteoporosis Exercise Myths That Need to Stop

After years of working with people managing osteoporosis—and a career background as an ACSM-certified strength coach and competitive powerlifter—I've heard a lot of advice. Some of it good. A lot of it... not so much.

Here are six persistent myths that need to go away.

Myth #1: "Just Walk More"

This is the most common advice people get after an osteoporosis diagnosis. And while walking is excellent for cardiovascular health, mood, and general mobility, it's not effective for building bone density.

Why? Bones respond to force magnitude, not duration. Walking produces forces of about 1.5 times your body weight—well below the ~4.2x threshold needed to trigger bone adaptation.

You could walk 10,000 steps a day for years and still see your DEXA scores decline. I've seen it happen countless times.

The reality: Walking is great for many things. Building bone isn't one of them.

Myth #2: "Avoid Weights—You'll Hurt Yourself"

This one drives me crazy. The fear that strength training is dangerous for people with osteoporosis has kept countless people away from one of the few interventions that actually helps.

Yes, there are precautions. Yes, technique matters. But properly supervised resistance training is safer for people with osteoporosis than avoiding it—because the alternative (continued bone loss and muscle weakness) dramatically increases fracture risk.

The reality: Controlled loading strengthens bones. Avoiding loading weakens them. The "be careful" advice, taken to its logical extreme, makes things worse.

Myth #3: "Swimming and Water Aerobics Are Great for Bones"

Water exercise is wonderful for joint-friendly cardio and maintaining mobility. But from a bone-loading perspective, it's essentially useless.

Buoyancy removes the very thing bones need: gravitational load. You're not providing any meaningful mechanical stimulus to your skeleton. Research consistently shows that swimmers have lower bone density than people who do land-based activities.

The reality: If you enjoy swimming, keep doing it for fitness. Just don't count on it to help your bones.

Myth #4: "More Exercise Is Always Better"

This is a general fitness myth that's especially problematic for bone health. Bone cells become desensitized to loading after relatively few cycles. Additional loading at the same magnitude doesn't produce additional benefit—it just produces additional fatigue.

Marathon runners, for example, often have lower bone density than you'd expect given their activity level. They're providing tons of low-magnitude loading and not enough high-magnitude stimulus.

Meanwhile, gymnasts and sprinters—who experience brief, intense forces—have remarkably high bone density despite lower training volumes.

The reality: For bone specifically, intensity trumps volume. A few maximal efforts beat hours of moderate activity.

Myth #5: "Vibration Plates Build Bone"

This one sounds scientific, so it spreads easily. The reality? Vibration plates were developed by NASA to help astronauts recover from bone loss after returning from the space station—loss caused by zero gravity. They address disuse. They don't build new density.

If vibration plates actually built bone, OsteoStrong would never have gotten off the ground. The research would've made us irrelevant before we started.

The reality: Vibration therapy has legitimate recovery applications. Building bone isn't one of them.

Myth #6: "Weighted Vests Strengthen Your Skeleton"

The logic seems sound: add weight, increase load, build bone. But here's the problem—your body adapts to the vest as your new normal weight. You're not providing a bone-building stimulus; you're just... heavier.

To trigger bone adaptation, you need forces well above what your body is accustomed to. A 10-pound vest doesn't get you there. It just makes walking slightly harder.

The reality: Weighted vests can add challenge to cardio. They won't move your DEXA scores.

What Actually Works

If you want to address bone density specifically, you need:

1. High-magnitude loading—forces well above what daily activities provide
2. Brief duration—bones respond to peak force, not accumulated time
3. Appropriate recovery—bone remodeling is slow; hammering it daily doesn't help
4. Consistency over time—this is a long game, measured in months and years

That's it. No magic supplements, no special diets, no elaborate exercise programs. Just the right type of mechanical stimulus, applied consistently, with patience.