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As you age, your bones generally start to weaken. You tend to lose bone mineral density, an indicator of bone strength, which makes you more prone to fractures in old age.
To maintain or even strengthen your bones, it helps to load the skeleton with enough force, researchers say. And, jumping around appears to provide this force.
"A little bit of jumping two or three times a week could go a long way in benefiting your bone health throughout your lifespan," said Pam Bruzina, a professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri.
Different forms of jumping can build bone density in the femoral neck, studies have found, which is one of the most fracture-prone parts of your hip joint. A meta-analysis of 18 trials on jumping with more than 600 participants found a 1.5 percent improvement in bone mineral density at the hip after a median of six months of jump training.
Walking - although it can be a great form of exercise in general - isn't enough to build stronger bones, said Kerri Winters-Stone, an exercise physiologist and a professor at Oregon Health & Science University. The skeleton becomes accustomed to the loads we typically subject the body to.
"You have to surprise the bone," she said. "You have to do something different."
But there's one caveat, Winters-Stone said. You need to have enough muscles around your legs, hips and back to support your joints when you jump.
Jumping for impact may not be safe for someone who's frail or struggling with balance, said Emily Stein, the co-director for the Skeletal Health and Orthopedic Research Program at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. And the benefit of jumping is "very small" when compared with the effect of medications for osteoporosis, she said.
"Exercise should not be viewed as an alternative to osteoporosis medications," said Wendy Kohrt, a distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Jumping may also not be "well tolerated" by people dealing with joint pain, she said.
However, exercise is critical for maintaining bone health, researchers say. And jumping should be an effective way to create impact for the bones.
"But I just don't think we know enough yet about what the best exercises are," and there's no definitive answer regarding how beneficial jumping may be, she said.
• What studies have found
In one small randomized trial, 60 premenopausal women ages 25 to 50 jumped as high as possible, 10 or 20 times twice a day, with 30 seconds of rest between each jump. And, after four months of jumping six days a week, researchers found the participants in the two jumping groups improved bone mineral density in their hips.
And, in a 12-month clinical trial published in the scientific journal Bone, middle-aged men with low bone mass gained bone density after a year of jump or resistance training. One group of participants jumped for 20 to 30 minutes per session three times a week with 10 seconds of rest between every jump.
The bone responds best when "there's a small rest between each loading cycle" - or between each jump, said Bruzina, the lead author of the study in Bone.
Months of jumping exercises for a 1 percent increase in bone density might sound like a lot of work for not a lot of benefit, said Jocelyn Wittstein, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke University School of Medicine. But the impact training is working against a natural decline, she said.
"Any intervention that slows that loss or mitigates it is better than nothing," Wittstein said, and "any load-bearing activity on your legs is better than being sedentary."
• Ways to start jumping around
Bruzina said she'd tell friends and family to incorporate jumping exercises two or three times a week - "somewhere between 40 and 100 jumps" per session. The jumps can be in place, off a box or side to side, she said.
The key is to mix it up with "more of a load than your skeleton is used to," Bruzina said. Then, slowly increase the intensity over time.
You want a "solid, full-footed landing before you go and jump again," Winters-Stone said. The point of the jump is the impact when you land on the ground. It's not the same as jumping rope because th
at's minimizing contact with the ground "and we're trying to maximize it," she said. "People just want clear instruction and actionable things they can do for their health," Wittstein said. Last month, she uploaded video on Instagram of a drop-jump method used in a small study published in 2017. Her demonstration in her backyard has been viewed more than 900,000 times.
But improvements in bone density take time, researchers said. Any benefits of jumping or impact training would require at least six months to a year of training.
Before you add jumping exercises to your workout routine, start with a few months of resistance training to strengthen the muscles around your hip and spine, Winters-Stone said. These muscles will absorb some of the impact from the jump so the joints aren't getting slammed.
To strengthen the muscles around the hip, practice squats and lunges, Winters-Stone said. Add overhead presses and rows to build muscles around the spine. Deadlifts will help beef up muscles around both the hip and spine.
If you've been diagnosed with osteoporosis, "any kind of rapid landing" could cause a fracture and you should only do jumping exercises under supervised instruction, said Belinda Beck, a professor of exercise physiology at Griffith University in Australia. Beck conducted a clinical trial that found a supervised, structured impact and resistance workout can improve bone strength in women with osteoporosis.
"I would not be telling somebody with osteoporosis to do jumping unsupervised," Beck said. "It's much more likely to cause an injury."
Wittstein said she recommends people with osteoporosis consult their doctor first and begin with exercises that have less impact such as heel drops.
• Pick up a sport where you're jumping
Gymnasts and athletes who play basketball or volleyball tend to have higher bone density and one thing in common, Winters-Stone said. "They hit the ground a lot," she said.
When we're kids, playing outside - jumping out of trees or playing tag - loads the skeleton in a variety of ways, Winters-Stone said. And the more bone you build earlier in life, the better off you'll be as you age.
The older we get, the less we twist, turn or move in different directions, Kohrt said. Sports such as tennis, pickleball or golf involve movements other than putting one foot in front of the other.
Cycling and swimming, by comparison, don't provide the same ground impact, Stein said. There are many benefits to both sports, but Stein tells patients to work in other exercises that have higher impact on their bones.
"Whatever you can do that's going to stress the skeleton - whether it's jumping or generating fairly high intensity muscle forces pulling on bone - those are the sort of activities that are going to keep bone responsive," Kohrt said.
Typically, a person's bone mineral density peaks in their late 20s or early 30s. But, Kohrt said, she believes older adults are still able to strengthen bones.
"I think the skeleton remains resilient to stress," Kohrt said. "It will do whatever it can do to protect the skeleton against fracture."
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