skeleton

 

A study of 99 adolescents, with an average age of 14 years old, found that high impact activities such as jumping and skipping that can easily be incorporated into warm-ups before sports and physical education classes, can benefit bone health in adolescents.

 

The study involved incorporating a 10 minute high impact exercise session twice a week for eight months. After this time, participants significantly improved their bone and muscle strength. The warm up included star jumps, skipping and tuck jumps and was specifically designed to apply a bone-stimulating mechanical load on the skeleton. Students worked up to about 300 jumps per session by the end of the study.

Physiotherapist Ben Weeks said: “Eighty per cent of bone mass is accrued in the first 20 years and especially around puberty due to the circulating hormones. This study targets a window of opportunity in adolescence to maximise peak bone mass with high-intensity, weight-bearing activity.” Weeks, a member of the Bone, Muscle and Movement Group within the Griffith Institute of Health and Medical Research, believes that while the study showed that a simple, practical exercise intervention can result in worthwhile skeletal benefits in adolescents, larger longitudinal studies were required to determine whether the beneficial effects could persist into adulthood and reduce the risk of future bone fractures.

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