This is a solved problem. Resistance training is incredibly effective at not just preventing but totally reversing bone loss in women. That is on top of about a hundred thousand other proven benefits of training. Literally 30 minutes a week at planet fitness with a halfway decent plan can gift you 30+ quality adjusted life years.
But how do we treat this proven, accessible, miraculous cure to this life threatening problem that every woman faces? Well, we endure extreme societal pressure to avoid lifting weights at all costs of course! Wouldn’t want to accidentally become too manly!
Literally everyone should be sickened by this state of affairs
That’s a really goddamn bold claim that you don’t bother to back up. Here’s a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis exploring our current understanding of how resistance training improves bone mineral density in postmenopausal women.
Here’s their conclusion:
Resistance training can beneficially influence BMD [bone mineral density] in postmenopausal women, particularly at the LS [lumbar spine], FN [femoral neck], and TH [total hip]. A high-intensity training regimen (≥ 70% 1RM [1-rep max]) performed three times per week with a longer training duration may be optimal. However, significant heterogeneity among the included studies for LS and FN bone density may affect the accuracy of the pooled results, thereby limiting the generalizability of these findings. More high-quality clinical trials are needed to confirm these findings.
So it’s good. Nobody would deny that it’s good. The problem is when you start throwing around terms like “solved” and “miraculous cure” to complex medical problems without anything to back it up – especially in an era of rampant medical disinformation.
I think the previous comment was rather hyperbolic, but to a degree it’s true. I wouldn’t call it solved, obviously, since removing all other factors, women experience more osteoporosis and overall bone loss than men in general. Though when we consider activity, it’s more common for men to be physically active in general, and higher overall muscle mass means greater bone density in the longer term, to my understanding.
But also, most of western society is extremely sedentary, and there is a certain inertia when it comes to encouraging physical fitness as a solution. People do tend to want a magic pill for things. Just look at all the fervor over Ozempic.
Thank you for actually engaging with the post instead of devolving into a holier-than-thou wanna-be-lawyer analysis that is selectively deaf to existence of hyperbole!
I would say that we can’t ignore the historical or biological context of why women experience more osteoporosis. Menopause obviously, but also the pressure to avoid training.
Given the biological context, and the proven effectiveness of training, the only honest conclusion is that training is more important for women than men. Yet it’s still far more common for women to be pushed away from the gym, due to it widely being considered masculine. Hopefully we can all work together to rectify this serious issue
If there was a single exercise myth I wished I could wipe off the earth it’s the “women shouldn’t lift heavy weights because then they’ll get all muscly, so they should use low weight to ‘tone’ muscles”
MF do you think it’s EASY to ACCIDENTALLY get ripped at the gym? If men struggle to gain muscle mass without a ton of drugs do you think a woman will just “accidentally” get ripped AF doing some bicep curls with a 15 instead of a 5??
I see so many women who have certain strength or body shape goals but actively avoid the exercises in the gym that will get them there faster because of this nonsense.
One data point only. My mom and grandma had osteoporosis, and I had restrictive eating as a teen so didn’t build enough bones. I do work out heavier than my mom did (lift occasionally but also yoga with pushups & arm balancing, etc. More focus on muscle) because of starting at a disadvantage and also, importantly, do MHT. At mid-50s I did manage to immaterially INCREASE my bone mass, so a little better than maintaining, rather than the steep loss that would be expected at menopause.
There is more than one factor, right? I encouraged my daughters to eat more and do more exercise when they were teenagers so they will start out with heavier bones than I did, if you start with more you can lose some and still be ok.
But plenty of people have osteoporosis as an endocrine issue, the chemistry of their blood is taking more bone than it’s building. I don’t think that’s something that you can necessarily lift your way out of.
Incredibly disingenuous of you to phrase it as “unable to deny that it’s good” while posting irrelevant snippets from studies. Yes, research is still ongoing on how much resistance training is needed to reap the full benefits. Research of this type will always be ongoing.
Meanwhile, the consensus of all medical experts is that women should be training because it has the power to reverse the course of this debilitating illness, among about a hundred thousand other significant benefits. We’re not at the “looking into it” stage, we’re at “the mayo clinic officially recommends training” stage.
Everyone with an idea of how debilitating illnesses usually play out will have correctly identified this as a being a miracle. You, like me, should be rejoicing in this fact and going out into the streets to yell this news at everyone who will listen.
It is such a sadness that women have for so long been robbed of their opportunity to partake in training due to stigma
Instead of just critiquing, how about you actually try to back up your claim that resistance training significantly improves bone density or prevents bone loss in women? As you haven’t provided any sources, it sounds like you’re just repeating gym bro anecdotal knowledge. You’re the one making that claim.
There’s plenty of studies on the effects of resistance training on Osteosarcopenia and Osteoporosis. You’re being a little ridiculous here. It’s a simple google search away.
You want a source for the consensus of all credible medical experts? Sure, you can start with the link the other user posted which 100% confirms the claim and also has its own enormous list of sources.
You could then type “resistance training osteoporosis mayo clinic” into your favorite search bar to see why they so strongly advise resistance training for women with the condition.
You could then try doing the same with literally any and every institution.
There’s a reason it devolved into “unable to say that it’s not good”. It is simply an established fact that training increases your bone density. This is obviously a godsend for those of us predisposed to reduced bone density as we age.
And for the record, I 100% stand with whatever gym bros you are referring to who are begging older ladies to come train with them so they can maintain their quality of life and independence as they age. Did you intend that as an insult? You make them sound like the chillest, nicest people on earth lol
Same with mine! There’s been a lot of outreach and acceptance and many women have discovered that training can be a joy. I think much credit can also be granted to the sport of women’s powerlifting, which is growing rapidly
So, to this I would say, yes and no. The actual privilege is the knowledge on the different forms of resistance training.
If the knowledge is in place, actual physical inaccessibility to the practice is incredibly fringe. Even people with pretty extreme pathologies have access (more often than not, it is explicitly medically recommended for them to train).
The key to understanding the accessibility is identifying the movement patterns and how to load them. Right so, you may be thinking things at this point like, “well plenty of people don’t have a car, or can’t afford a gym membership, or don’t even have a gym nearby, or don’t have any time in the day to train.” This is all very valid and will change how your training looks.
But resistance training is available everywhere. For some specific examples,
I had an 80 year old woman who had all but lost the ability to raise her arms above her head. She can’t drive and doesn’t really have access to the gym. But she does have a pantry full of cans of soup! So I progressed her through some isometrics, then eventually got her doing lat raises with the small cans. Then some bicep curls, also with the soup. Triceps ended up being (sorry if this is tough to visualize) laying down in bed with her elbow propped up on a pillow, doing a type of single arm skullcrusher with the soup.
Well it turns out after a few months of training these muscles and adding some reps, with a little work coordinating it all together, she eventually could pick up a soup, curl it to her shoulder, then push it above her head! Then after a while she could do it for reps! In practical terms, at this point she had restored her ability to dress herself independently and take food out of her freezer.
It turns out you can do most things with soup! Started her on seated good mornings (a type of deadlift) with the soup to hit her hinge. Put a can of soup in a grocery bag and hooked it around her foot so she could do seated quad extensions from her dining room chair. Hopefully this is getting the idea across
On the other hand, the biggest barrier in my experience is depression. It doesn’t really matter what is theoretically accessible to you if you simply can’t be mustered to do it. I have one client where I agreed their workouts would basically be optional and I wouldn’t charge them for last minute cancellations. So I basically just set them a time where I have something else I could be doing, and if they show up, great, if not, no big deal.
I set this arrangement up in direct contradiction to my mentor’s advice, who is a great trainer but is very business oriented. And to be fair there’s no way I could take a second client like this.
But you know what, I’ll be darned, even showing up only 30% of the time they have actually totally transformed their body in about 6 months. Huge strength increases and about 20lbs of bodyweight loss as the same time. It’s actually kind of challenged some of the ideas I have about the importance of “consistency”, at least for beginners.
Anyway, sorry for such a lengthy reply. You put me in an awkward position, I can’t exactly just say, “No way bro, just figure out a setup for grandma to start doing deadlifts and skullcrushers bro” even though that really pretty much is the gist of it lmao. A big part of the problem is that people have very deeply rooted preconceptions of training to the point where they end up deeming themselves ineligible before ever really considering they have a ton of options
I liked reading your story, and I believe it. I’ve had PT earlier in life that literally started me with soup cans so I know this is a thing, it was in the literature my doctors were using to prescribe my home exercises.
That aside, I wanted to concur with your underlying point that you don’t need a gym membership to do basic resistance training, especially not where we’re talking about the goal is old ladies trying to keep the body moving.
Is it nice to have some dumbbells, a bench, a squat rack? Sure, but you can use anything. Basic exercise is free, minus the cost of shoes (for most cardio).
Definitely! Even if one is already generally healthy and wanted to build lots of muscle from there, it can be done very cheaply. You can get pretty far with just the ground. A pair of gymnastics rings is cheaper than shoes and opens up a whole word of effective workouts.
There’s an awesome youtuber “Hybrid Calisthenics” who has a ton of videos getting deep into the weeds on this. He shows the progressions literally all the way from minimal mobility (not able to ‘bench press’ your empty hands) to doing full strict pushups. He has lots of great content on mentality, too, which is something that is generally under-discussed imo
It’s actually even worse than it sounds.
This is a solved problem. Resistance training is incredibly effective at not just preventing but totally reversing bone loss in women. That is on top of about a hundred thousand other proven benefits of training. Literally 30 minutes a week at planet fitness with a halfway decent plan can gift you 30+ quality adjusted life years.
But how do we treat this proven, accessible, miraculous cure to this life threatening problem that every woman faces? Well, we endure extreme societal pressure to avoid lifting weights at all costs of course! Wouldn’t want to accidentally become too manly!
Literally everyone should be sickened by this state of affairs
That’s a really goddamn bold claim that you don’t bother to back up. Here’s a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis exploring our current understanding of how resistance training improves bone mineral density in postmenopausal women.
Here’s their conclusion:
So it’s good. Nobody would deny that it’s good. The problem is when you start throwing around terms like “solved” and “miraculous cure” to complex medical problems without anything to back it up – especially in an era of rampant medical disinformation.
I think the previous comment was rather hyperbolic, but to a degree it’s true. I wouldn’t call it solved, obviously, since removing all other factors, women experience more osteoporosis and overall bone loss than men in general. Though when we consider activity, it’s more common for men to be physically active in general, and higher overall muscle mass means greater bone density in the longer term, to my understanding.
But also, most of western society is extremely sedentary, and there is a certain inertia when it comes to encouraging physical fitness as a solution. People do tend to want a magic pill for things. Just look at all the fervor over Ozempic.
Thank you for actually engaging with the post instead of devolving into a holier-than-thou wanna-be-lawyer analysis that is selectively deaf to existence of hyperbole!
I would say that we can’t ignore the historical or biological context of why women experience more osteoporosis. Menopause obviously, but also the pressure to avoid training.
Given the biological context, and the proven effectiveness of training, the only honest conclusion is that training is more important for women than men. Yet it’s still far more common for women to be pushed away from the gym, due to it widely being considered masculine. Hopefully we can all work together to rectify this serious issue
If there was a single exercise myth I wished I could wipe off the earth it’s the “women shouldn’t lift heavy weights because then they’ll get all muscly, so they should use low weight to ‘tone’ muscles”
MF do you think it’s EASY to ACCIDENTALLY get ripped at the gym? If men struggle to gain muscle mass without a ton of drugs do you think a woman will just “accidentally” get ripped AF doing some bicep curls with a 15 instead of a 5??
I see so many women who have certain strength or body shape goals but actively avoid the exercises in the gym that will get them there faster because of this nonsense.
I wonder how it looks for women who started before menopause though rather than after.
One data point only. My mom and grandma had osteoporosis, and I had restrictive eating as a teen so didn’t build enough bones. I do work out heavier than my mom did (lift occasionally but also yoga with pushups & arm balancing, etc. More focus on muscle) because of starting at a disadvantage and also, importantly, do MHT. At mid-50s I did manage to immaterially INCREASE my bone mass, so a little better than maintaining, rather than the steep loss that would be expected at menopause.
There is more than one factor, right? I encouraged my daughters to eat more and do more exercise when they were teenagers so they will start out with heavier bones than I did, if you start with more you can lose some and still be ok.
But plenty of people have osteoporosis as an endocrine issue, the chemistry of their blood is taking more bone than it’s building. I don’t think that’s something that you can necessarily lift your way out of.
Incredibly disingenuous of you to phrase it as “unable to deny that it’s good” while posting irrelevant snippets from studies. Yes, research is still ongoing on how much resistance training is needed to reap the full benefits. Research of this type will always be ongoing.
Meanwhile, the consensus of all medical experts is that women should be training because it has the power to reverse the course of this debilitating illness, among about a hundred thousand other significant benefits. We’re not at the “looking into it” stage, we’re at “the mayo clinic officially recommends training” stage.
Everyone with an idea of how debilitating illnesses usually play out will have correctly identified this as a being a miracle. You, like me, should be rejoicing in this fact and going out into the streets to yell this news at everyone who will listen.
It is such a sadness that women have for so long been robbed of their opportunity to partake in training due to stigma
Instead of just critiquing, how about you actually try to back up your claim that resistance training significantly improves bone density or prevents bone loss in women? As you haven’t provided any sources, it sounds like you’re just repeating gym bro anecdotal knowledge. You’re the one making that claim.
There’s plenty of studies on the effects of resistance training on Osteosarcopenia and Osteoporosis. You’re being a little ridiculous here. It’s a simple google search away.
You want a source for the consensus of all credible medical experts? Sure, you can start with the link the other user posted which 100% confirms the claim and also has its own enormous list of sources.
You could then type “resistance training osteoporosis mayo clinic” into your favorite search bar to see why they so strongly advise resistance training for women with the condition.
You could then try doing the same with literally any and every institution.
There’s a reason it devolved into “unable to say that it’s not good”. It is simply an established fact that training increases your bone density. This is obviously a godsend for those of us predisposed to reduced bone density as we age.
And for the record, I 100% stand with whatever gym bros you are referring to who are begging older ladies to come train with them so they can maintain their quality of life and independence as they age. Did you intend that as an insult? You make them sound like the chillest, nicest people on earth lol
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
I’ve never heard of a guy not wanting their girl to do strength training, that just makes the girl hotter…
Maybe that’s like an old person thing? Like gen x and older?
I gotta say though, there are a ton of women lifting at the gyms I’ve gone to
Same with mine! There’s been a lot of outreach and acceptance and many women have discovered that training can be a joy. I think much credit can also be granted to the sport of women’s powerlifting, which is growing rapidly
your enthusiasm in this thread is apparent, and it’s great that many women are benefitting from weight training.
BUT i just really want to point out that access to this kind of stuff is a privilege not available to everyone who might benefit.
So, to this I would say, yes and no. The actual privilege is the knowledge on the different forms of resistance training.
If the knowledge is in place, actual physical inaccessibility to the practice is incredibly fringe. Even people with pretty extreme pathologies have access (more often than not, it is explicitly medically recommended for them to train).
The key to understanding the accessibility is identifying the movement patterns and how to load them. Right so, you may be thinking things at this point like, “well plenty of people don’t have a car, or can’t afford a gym membership, or don’t even have a gym nearby, or don’t have any time in the day to train.” This is all very valid and will change how your training looks.
But resistance training is available everywhere. For some specific examples,
I had an 80 year old woman who had all but lost the ability to raise her arms above her head. She can’t drive and doesn’t really have access to the gym. But she does have a pantry full of cans of soup! So I progressed her through some isometrics, then eventually got her doing lat raises with the small cans. Then some bicep curls, also with the soup. Triceps ended up being (sorry if this is tough to visualize) laying down in bed with her elbow propped up on a pillow, doing a type of single arm skullcrusher with the soup.
Well it turns out after a few months of training these muscles and adding some reps, with a little work coordinating it all together, she eventually could pick up a soup, curl it to her shoulder, then push it above her head! Then after a while she could do it for reps! In practical terms, at this point she had restored her ability to dress herself independently and take food out of her freezer.
It turns out you can do most things with soup! Started her on seated good mornings (a type of deadlift) with the soup to hit her hinge. Put a can of soup in a grocery bag and hooked it around her foot so she could do seated quad extensions from her dining room chair. Hopefully this is getting the idea across
On the other hand, the biggest barrier in my experience is depression. It doesn’t really matter what is theoretically accessible to you if you simply can’t be mustered to do it. I have one client where I agreed their workouts would basically be optional and I wouldn’t charge them for last minute cancellations. So I basically just set them a time where I have something else I could be doing, and if they show up, great, if not, no big deal.
I set this arrangement up in direct contradiction to my mentor’s advice, who is a great trainer but is very business oriented. And to be fair there’s no way I could take a second client like this.
But you know what, I’ll be darned, even showing up only 30% of the time they have actually totally transformed their body in about 6 months. Huge strength increases and about 20lbs of bodyweight loss as the same time. It’s actually kind of challenged some of the ideas I have about the importance of “consistency”, at least for beginners.
Anyway, sorry for such a lengthy reply. You put me in an awkward position, I can’t exactly just say, “No way bro, just figure out a setup for grandma to start doing deadlifts and skullcrushers bro” even though that really pretty much is the gist of it lmao. A big part of the problem is that people have very deeply rooted preconceptions of training to the point where they end up deeming themselves ineligible before ever really considering they have a ton of options
I liked reading your story, and I believe it. I’ve had PT earlier in life that literally started me with soup cans so I know this is a thing, it was in the literature my doctors were using to prescribe my home exercises.
That aside, I wanted to concur with your underlying point that you don’t need a gym membership to do basic resistance training, especially not where we’re talking about the goal is old ladies trying to keep the body moving.
Is it nice to have some dumbbells, a bench, a squat rack? Sure, but you can use anything. Basic exercise is free, minus the cost of shoes (for most cardio).
Definitely! Even if one is already generally healthy and wanted to build lots of muscle from there, it can be done very cheaply. You can get pretty far with just the ground. A pair of gymnastics rings is cheaper than shoes and opens up a whole word of effective workouts.
There’s an awesome youtuber “Hybrid Calisthenics” who has a ton of videos getting deep into the weeds on this. He shows the progressions literally all the way from minimal mobility (not able to ‘bench press’ your empty hands) to doing full strict pushups. He has lots of great content on mentality, too, which is something that is generally under-discussed imo
deleted by creator