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Part of Osteoporosis

Weighted vest osteoporosis claims, and what the trials actually measured

Weighted vest osteoporosis claims run well ahead of the evidence, and the honest summary is short. A 2026 systematic review of nine trials in 368 people found that a weighted vest worn while you exercise beat ordinary activity for bone density at the hip and the lower spine, and that adding a vest to exercise you were already doing produced no significant bone benefit, on the strength of a single study (Wang 2026). So searching weighted vest osteoporosis turns up a device with a plausible mechanism, one encouraging small study from 2000, and a larger recent trial that was negative at the hip. Wearing a vest around the house without exercising is the use with the least support of all. Nobody has tested a weighted vest in people with established osteoporosis and a previous fracture, which is the reader most likely to be asking.

Warning signs, and when to get help

Do weighted vests help bone density?

Weighted vests have had a good year on the internet and a quieter one in the journals. The evidence exists, it is small, and it answers a narrower question than the one people are asking.

The best summary available is a 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis that pooled nine randomized controlled trials and 368 participants. Vest plus exercise beat usual activity for bone density at the femoral neck, the narrow part at the top of the thigh bone, and at the lumbar spine. The effects were moderate in size and the evidence behind them was rated low to moderate certainty, while the body fat findings in the same review were rated high certainty (Wang 2026).

The next result is the one almost nothing written about vests carries. The review also compared a vest added to exercise against the same exercise without a vest, and found no significant bone benefit, noting that this comparison rests on a single study. Its own conclusion restricts itself to generally healthy middle-aged and older adults and calls for more research in people whose exercise capacity is limited.

Put those two results together. Putting on a vest and exercising beats doing nothing, which is also true of exercising without a vest. Whether the vest itself is doing any of the work has not been shown.

What the largest and most recent trial found

The study a reader is most likely to come across is a 2025 randomized trial, and it is negative.

It took 150 older adults with obesity, mean age 66.4, three quarters of them women, and put them through 12 months in one of three groups: dietary weight loss on its own, weight loss plus a weighted vest worn for a target of 8 hours a day with the weight titrated up as the body weight came off, or weight loss plus supervised progressive resistance training three times a week. Nearly nine in ten finished. Average reported wear was 7.1 hours a day, which replaced 78.0 percent of the weight the participants had lost (Beavers 2025).

Trabecular bone density at the total hip fell in all three groups, by between 1.2 and 1.9 percent, with no difference between the vest group and weight loss alone. The authors' own conclusion is that neither weighted vest use nor progressive resistance training was able to offset the bone loss at the hip that goes with losing weight.

Two notes on how to read that. It was a trial in people deliberately losing weight, which is a situation where bone tends to be lost, so it is not a straight test of a vest in a stable-weight reader. And it carries a published correction, which we read: it fixes how one group's abbreviation was defined in two figure captions and two table footnotes, and a unit label in the first table. None of the trial's results changed, and the figures here are the ones in its abstract.

The falls signal, and why it matters more for this reader

Not one page on the subject we looked at mentions the falls data, and for a reader with fragile bones it is the half that counts.

A 2026 review of weighted vest studies pulls out something the trial itself reports in its adverse event table, where falls were logged as events, and the count ran against the vest group: 14 falls in the vest arm, against 10 with weight loss alone and 7 with weight loss plus resistance training, across three groups of 50 people over a year (Beavers 2025). In the same breath the review says the trial was not powered to measure falls and reported no between-group statistical test, so the data are a safety signal rather than evidence of a cause (Luo 2026). Both halves of that sentence are worth holding. Four extra falls in fifty people over twelve months is a small enough difference to be chance, and it is also pointing the wrong way for somebody with fragile bones.

The same table carries a second signal, and for an osteoporotic spine it is the more interesting one. Muscle and joint events were commoner in both of the active groups than in weight loss alone, which is what the authors expected and what training usually produces: 34 percent of the vest group and 38 percent of the resistance training group, against 12 percent of the group losing weight without either. Back pain is where the vest stands apart. It was recorded in 12 percent of the vest group, against 6 percent with resistance training and 2 percent with weight loss alone (Beavers 2025).

In a separate 22-week trial where the vest was worn daily and the load built up week by week, the review records five participants reporting vest-related back pain or soreness, handled by stopping, pausing for a few weeks or cutting the load, with the symptoms settling in each case (Luo 2026). The same caveat applies as to the falls: neither trial was powered for these outcomes and no between-group test was reported for them. A vest hangs its load on the shoulders and the trunk, which is the part of you the bending advice is about, so a vest that makes your back ache is a reason to take it off rather than to push on.

For most readers that would be a footnote. For a reader with osteoporosis it is the center of the question, because a fall is the mechanism by which a fragile bone becomes a broken one. A device that adds mass high on the trunk is not a neutral experiment for somebody whose balance is already the thing keeping them out of hospital. The same review found that 7 of 17 participants in another study, 41.2 percent, rated wearing the vest as a hindrance, and it recommends clear stop rules for new or worsening pain, dizziness, and marked instability or near misses.

If you are going to try one, that is the reason to do it with a physio watching you walk in it rather than on your own in a hallway. The two pages that actually deal with the falling half are preventing falls at home and the balance and falls prevention program, and neither of them needs you to buy anything.

The five year study everybody means

Almost every enthusiastic article about vests is pointing at the same paper without saying so, and it is worth knowing its size.

It followed 18 postmenopausal women over five years. Nine of them did weighted vest exercise plus jumping, three times a week for 32 weeks of each year, and nine were active controls. The exercisers held bone density at the femoral neck, the trochanter and the total hip, with changes of plus 1.54, minus 0.24 and minus 0.82 percent, while the controls lost at all three sites, by 4.43, 3.43 and 3.80 percent (Snow 2000).

That is a genuinely interesting result and it is nine people in the exercise arm. The program was a vest plus jumping, not a vest on its own, so the jumping may be doing the work. The abstract gives no vest weight, so no load figure can be taken from it. And the same research group's earlier nine-month trial, in 44 women, found improvements in lower-body strength, power, lateral stability and leg lean mass, with no significant change in femoral neck bone mass in either group (Shaw 1998).

Does wearing a vest on its own do anything?

The thing most people buy a vest in order to do, which is wear it, is the use with no measured effect.

A randomized trial in 2000 put 62 people with a mean age of 74 into three groups: no vest, a vest at 3 percent of body weight, or a vest at 5 percent of body weight. The prescription was 2 hours a day, 4 days a week, for 27 weeks, with no exercise required. Strength, endurance, physical performance, bone turnover markers and quality of life did not differ by group, and the authors concluded that the stimulus was below the amount required to produce strength gains or bone stimulation (Greendale 2000).

A later pilot in 37 older adults with obesity, who were asked to wear a vest for 10 or more hours a day and managed 6.7 hours on average over 22 weeks, found no significant changes in bone density or in bone biomarkers (Kelleher 2017). Its authors read two non-significant trends as a hint that vest wear might slow the hip bone loss that comes with losing weight, and asked for further study. The larger trial described above is that further study, and it was null. The 2026 review reaches the same conclusion across the literature: low-load wear-only protocols generally did not show measurable improvements in muscle or bone outcomes, and the benefits that did appear tended to come from task-based, progressively loaded prescriptions (Luo 2026).

So the pattern in the evidence is consistent, and it is not the pattern the product pages describe. Load applied during movement has produced something. Load worn while you sit has not.

Nobody has tested this in the reader most likely to be asking

We looked for the trial that would answer your actual question, which is whether a vest is a good idea for a person with established osteoporosis who has already broken a bone. It does not exist.

Two PubMed searches on vest and bone returned 32 records between them, every title was read, and the abstracts of the nine most relevant were read in full. The closest match recruited 31 women aged 60 to 79 with osteopenia or osteoporosis and a mean T-score of minus 2.15, split across three groups for 8 weeks, which is about ten people per group, all three doing the same exercise with one adding a vest and one adding a vibration platform. The vest group's T-score rose slightly while the two comparison groups fell, and leg bone density rose by a small amount (Tantanasest 2026). The abstract gives no vest load. Treat it as preliminary, because that is what a three-arm study of 31 people over 8 weeks is.

Everything else recruited healthy older adults, older adults losing weight, or postmenopausal women not selected for fracture history. So nobody can tell you a vest is unsafe for the group with a previous fracture, and nobody can tell you it is safe either, because the study has not been done.

What the national bone bodies say about vests

Nothing, which is worth knowing before you spend any money.

We read seven pages from the Royal Osteoporosis Society, two from the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation, Osteoporosis Canada's Too Fit To Fracture material, Healthy Bones Australia's exercise page, the recommendations of the NICE falls guideline and the full text of the UK consensus statement, and searched every one of them for the word vest. Not one mentions a weighted vest. Two blind spots in that count, stated plainly: the Australian and NICE pages would not answer us directly and were read through the Internet Archive, so what we checked is what they said when the archive last copied them, and no New Zealand document was read at all.

An absence of advice is not advice against. It does mean that if a vest were an established part of osteoporosis management, four national bone charities, a national consensus statement and a national guideline institute have had the chance to say so and have not.

So is a weighted vest worth it?

On the evidence above, it is a long way down the list, and not the first thing to spend money or attention on.

What has better evidence behind it is already free. Progressive resistance training is the recommendation the UK consensus puts on the firmest footing, and the heavy-lifting trial most often quoted used a barbell in a supervised gym rather than a vest (Watson 2018, Brooke-Wavell 2022). Balance and functional exercise reduces the rate of falls by about a quarter at high certainty (Sherrington 2019). Those two are the Strong and Steady halves of the standard advice, and the best exercises for osteoporosis sets out what each is for, while strength training for osteoporosis covers the load question properly.

If you already own one and like it, the sensible use is during exercise rather than around the house, light to begin with, with somebody watching how you walk in it, and off at the first sign of a wobble. If you are wondering what carried load does to your joints rather than your bones, our post on rucking and weighted vest walking answers that half, and do vibration plates work covers the other device people ask about.

One exception matters more than anything above it. If you have had a fracture in a bone of your spine, or several broken bones from minor injuries, none of the above is where you start: see your own doctor or physio, follow the after-a-fracture section of the osteoporosis program, and bring the vest question to that appointment rather than deciding it here.

Related exercise programs

Warning signs

Get emergency help now

  • Emergency: if chest pain, pressure or tightness does not ease quickly when you rest, spreads to your arm, neck, jaw, stomach or back, or comes with sweating, feeling sick, feeling light-headed or being short of breath, call emergency services straight away, as this can be a heart attack. If it eases quickly and none of these happen, get medical advice the same day, and do not exercise again until you have been checked.
  • Emergency: any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away. That means a face that droops on one side, an arm you cannot lift or keep up, slurred or muddled speech, weakness or numbness on one side of your body or face, sudden blurred vision, double vision or loss of sight, trouble swallowing, sudden dizziness with unsteadiness or falling over, a sudden severe headache, or a sudden fall where your legs give way but you do not black out (a drop attack). Call emergency services straight away.
  • Emergency: a racing, pounding, fluttering or irregular heartbeat that does not settle when you rest, or that comes with dizziness, feeling faint or fainting, chest pain or shortness of breath. Call emergency services straight away. If it has already stopped, get medical advice the same day.
  • Emergency: you have just fallen and cannot get up, or you think you may have hurt your head, neck, back or hip. Stay where you are, keep warm and call emergency services, or get someone to call for you. Nobody should try to lift you off the floor, and nobody should pull you up by the arms: being hauled upright can move a broken bone that has not slipped yet and can make an injured neck or back worse. Someone helping should call for help, keep you warm and stay with you. If you got up and walked without trouble and only notice pain later, without any of the emergency signs in this list, use the same-day lines in it instead.
  • Emergency: you fell and cannot remember the fall or how it happened. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. You may have blacked out or hit your head without knowing it.
  • Emergency: you have had a fall or an injury and now have severe hip pain, or you cannot walk or put weight on the leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department. This can be a sign of a broken hip (hip fracture).
  • Emergency: numbness, tingling or altered feeling around or under your genitals, between your inner thighs, or around your bottom (anus), for example it feels different when you wipe after using the toilet. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be a sign of pressure on the bundle of nerves at the base of the spine (cauda equina syndrome), which needs emergency treatment.
  • Emergency: you find it hard to start peeing, cannot pee, cannot feel yourself peeing or cannot control when you pee, or you do not notice when you need to poo or cannot control when you poo, and this is not normal for you. The same applies to a new change in how your genitals feel during sex, new trouble getting or keeping an erection, new trouble ejaculating, or new trouble reaching orgasm. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. These can also be signs of cauda equina syndrome.
  • Emergency: sciatica in both legs, or pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in both legs. The same applies if you lose feeling in one leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
  • Emergency: new problems walking, for example your legs feel stiff, heavy or weak or you have become unsteady on your feet, new trouble controlling your bladder or bowels, or new numbness or pins and needles in a band around your chest or tummy, or below it. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. These can be signs of pressure on the spinal cord in the upper back.
  • Emergency: back or leg pain that started after a serious accident, such as a car crash or a fall from a height, or back pain with chest pain. Call emergency services. If the pain started straight after the accident, keep still while you wait.
  • Emergency: sudden, severe pain in your lower back or tummy that is not like your usual back pain, if you have been told you have a swelling of the main blood vessel in your tummy (abdominal aortic aneurysm), you are over 60, you smoke or used to smoke, or you have high blood pressure. The same applies if sudden, severe back or tummy pain comes with feeling faint or passing out, pale, sweaty or clammy skin (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), a racing heartbeat or being short of breath. Call emergency services straight away. This can be a sign of an aneurysm bursting, which needs treatment in hospital at once.
  • Emergency: new neck or back pain after a fall, a knock or a jolt, even a minor one such as a trip or a sudden stop in a car, if you have a condition that stiffens the spine, such as ankylosing spondylitis. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, do not drive yourself, and tell the staff about your spine condition, so they keep your neck and back in their usual position. A stiff spine can break after a small injury, and the break is easy to miss at first. If the pain started straight after the injury, or you also have numbness, tingling or weakness in your arms or legs, keep still and call emergency services.
  • Emergency: back pain with a fever, or you feel hot, shivery or very unwell, and you also have new weakness, numbness or tingling in one or both legs, or new trouble with your bladder or bowels. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be an infection pressing on the nerves in the spine (spinal epidural abscess), which needs emergency treatment.
  • Emergency: you have had cancer, now or in the past, and your back or neck pain feels like a tight band around your body, or you have new or worsening pain spreading down an arm or leg, weakness, numbness, pins and needles or a loss of feeling in your arms or legs, trouble walking, or trouble controlling your bladder or bowels. Those symptoms count on their own, with or without back or neck pain. Call your cancer team's emergency number straight away, or go to an emergency department if you do not have one or cannot get through, and do not drive yourself. This can be cancer pressing on the spinal cord (metastatic spinal cord compression), which needs treatment straight away.

Get help today

  • Same day: back pain after a minor fall or strain if you are older, have low bone density (osteoporosis) or have taken steroid tablets for a long time. Get medical advice the same day. Until it has been checked, stop the exercises and keep away from lifting, bending forward and twisting, because those load a bone in the spine that may be broken.
  • Back pain that comes on suddenly after lifting, bending, a cough or a sneeze, even without a fall, if you have low bone density (osteoporosis). Get medical advice the same day. This can be a sign of a broken bone in the spine (vertebral fracture). Stop the exercises until you have been checked, and keep away from lifting, bending forward and twisting in the meantime, because those load a broken vertebra whether you are exercising or not.
  • Severe pain that comes on suddenly or is getting worse quickly. Get medical advice the same day.
  • Back or leg pain with a fever, or you feel hot, cold, shivery or generally unwell. Get medical advice the same day, and go to an emergency department if you feel very unwell. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
  • Same day: new hip or groin pain after a fall, even a small one, if you are older, have low bone density (osteoporosis) or have taken steroid tablets for a long time, even if you can still walk. Get medical advice the same day, and say that you fell and that your bones are thin. Until it has been checked, stop the exercises and keep as much weight off that leg as you can, using your stick, frame or crutches if you have them and asking someone for help to move about, because a crack in the hip that has not slipped yet can slip when you walk on it, and a hip that has slipped usually needs a bigger operation than one that has not. A broken hip is not always obvious at first, and a first X-ray does not always show it, so if you have been checked and sent home and you still cannot walk on that leg, or the pain is getting worse, go back and say so.
  • A leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
  • Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.
  • You have back pain and have lost weight without trying. Get medical advice the same day and mention the weight loss.
  • New back pain and you have had cancer, now or in the past. Get medical advice the same day and mention your cancer history. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
  • Same day: you blacked out or fainted, even for a moment. Get medical advice the same day. Call emergency services instead if the person is not breathing, cannot be woken within 1 minute, has not fully recovered or has trouble speaking or moving, has chest pain or a pounding, fluttering or irregular heartbeat, fainted while exercising or lying down, is shaking or jerking, or was badly hurt.
  • Same day: dizziness, lightheadedness, blurred vision or feeling faint when you stand up that is new for you, does not pass within a minute or two, keeps happening, or has made you fall. Sit or lie down, and get medical advice the same day. This can be a drop in blood pressure on standing (postural hypotension), a type of low blood pressure, which the NHS lists among the causes of falls, and your doctor can check it. Tell them about your medicines, because some can cause it. If it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting or lying still, call emergency services. If you faint, use the fainting line above.
  • Same day: dizziness or feeling faint during or after exercise, other than the brief lightheadedness as you stand up covered in the line above, without any of the emergency signs above. Stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day. If you faint, it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting still, or you cannot stand or walk steadily, call emergency services.
  • Same day: pain that is worse at night, or does not ease at all when you rest. If you have had cancer, now or in the past, or you have lost weight without trying, get medical advice the same day.

Book an appointment

  • Within a few days: pain that is worse at night, or does not ease at all when you rest. See your doctor within a few days.
  • Routine: you have lost height, or your upper back has become more rounded and you are starting to stoop, or you have back pain, or pain that wraps around to your ribs, with no clear cause. Book an appointment with your doctor. A broken bone in the spine can cause this, and it does not always cause the pain you would expect. If the pain came on suddenly, get medical advice the same day.

Common questions

Do weighted vests help bone density?

A vest worn while you exercise does better than ordinary activity, and that is the clearest result available. The 2026 review of nine trials in 368 people found moderate improvements at the femoral neck and the lumbar spine for vest plus exercise against usual activity, with the bone evidence rated low to moderate certainty (Wang 2026). The question most people are actually asking is different: whether strapping a vest onto exercise they already do adds anything. That comparison was made in a single study in the same review and showed no significant bone benefit.

Do weighted vests prevent osteoporosis?

Nobody has shown that, and no trial has been designed to answer it. The studies measure bone density over months, not fractures over years, and the 2026 review limits its own conclusion to generally healthy middle-aged and older adults, saying more research is needed in people whose exercise capacity is restricted (Wang 2026). Bone density is also a proxy rather than the outcome you care about. If you want the part of this picture with high-certainty evidence behind it, it is the falls half, and preventing falls at home and the balance and falls prevention program are the two pages for it.

Do weighted vests help spinal osteoporosis?

The 2026 review did find an effect at the lumbar spine for vest plus exercise against usual activity, which is a real finding in a pooled analysis of nine small trials (Wang 2026). What nobody has studied is a vest in someone who has already broken a bone in the spine. A vest also puts its load on your shoulders and chest, and the advice for that group is low-impact exercise and individual physiotherapy advice, so this is a question for your own physio rather than for a product page. Osteoporosis posture and spine protection covers what the spine advice actually is.

How heavy should a weighted vest be?

There is no dose for this, and we are not going to invent one for a reader with fragile bones. What exists in the literature is the loads trials have used and one review's implementation advice. A 2000 trial tested vests at 3 and 5 percent of body weight, which is 2.1 to 3.5 kg (4.6 to 7.7 lb) for someone of 70 kg (154 lb), worn 2 hours a day 4 days a week for 27 weeks with no exercise required, and nothing differed from no vest at all (Greendale 2000). A 2026 narrative review suggests conservative initial loads of about 1 to 5 percent of body mass, progressing only once walking and technique are stable, which is 0.7 to 3.5 kg (1.5 to 7.7 lb) for the same person (Luo 2026). That is a reviewer's implementation suggestion, not a tested dose, and the load that suits you is a question for a physio who can watch you walk in it.

Are weighted vests safe with osteoporosis?

Unknown for the group with the most at stake, and that is the fair answer rather than a cautious dodge. We searched the published trials for one that recruited people with established osteoporosis and a previous fracture and found none, so nobody can tell you it is safe for that group and nobody can tell you it is not. The one trial we found whose participants reach into the osteoporosis range had 31 women across three arms over 8 weeks, which is roughly ten people per group (Tantanasest 2026). A 2026 review also recorded that falls were logged as adverse events in the largest recent vest trial and that the numbers ran against the vest group, while noting the trial was not powered for falls and reported no between-group test, so it is a safety signal and not a causal finding (Luo 2026). Back pain in that trial also ran against the vest, recorded in 12 percent of the vest group against 2 percent of the group losing weight without one, under the same caveat (Beavers 2025). Since a fall is how a fragile bone breaks, and the back is what a vest loads, those signals are the reason to involve a physio rather than a shopping site.

References

  1. Wang X, Zhou L, Shi T, et al. Effects of weighted vest on bone health and body fat in middle-aged and older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Osteoporosis International. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-026-08196-y
  2. Beavers KM, Lynch SD, Fanning J, et al. Weighted vest use or resistance exercise to offset weight loss-associated bone loss in older adults: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Network Open. 2025;8(6):e2516772. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.16772
  3. Luo H, Zhang X, Li H, Yin M, Li Z. Weighted vest interventions in older adults: a mini-review of implementation, benefits, and limitations. Frontiers in Public Health. 2026;14:1811712. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1811712
  4. Snow CM, Shaw JM, Winters KM, Witzke KA. Long-term exercise using weighted vests prevents hip bone loss in postmenopausal women. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. 2000;55(9):M489-M491. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/55.9.m489
  5. Greendale GA, Salem GJ, Young JT, et al. A randomized trial of weighted vest use in ambulatory older adults: strength, performance, and quality of life outcomes. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2000;48(3):305-311. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2000.tb02651.x
  6. Shaw JM, Snow CM. Weighted vest exercise improves indices of fall risk in older women. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. 1998;53(1):M53-M58. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/53a.1.m53
  7. Tantanasest J, Manimmanakorn A, Tunkamnerdthai O, et al. Comparative effects of weighted vest and whole-body vibration training on bone and muscle health in osteopenia. Life (Basel). 2026;16(2):229. https://doi.org/10.3390/life16020229
  8. Kelleher JL, Beavers DP, Henderson RM, et al. Weighted vest use during dietary weight loss on bone health in older adults with obesity. Journal of Osteoporosis and Physical Activity. 2017;5(4):210. https://doi.org/10.4172/2329-9509.1000210
  9. Brooke-Wavell K, Skelton DA, Barker KL, et al. Strong, steady and straight: UK consensus statement on physical activity and exercise for osteoporosis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2022;56(15):837-846. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2021-104634
  10. Watson SL, Weeks BK, Weis LJ, et al. High-intensity resistance and impact training improves bone mineral density and physical function in postmenopausal women with osteopenia and osteoporosis: the LIFTMOR randomized controlled trial. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. 2018;33(2):211-220. https://doi.org/10.1002/jbmr.3284
  11. Sherrington C, Fairhall NJ, Wallbank GK, et al. Exercise for preventing falls in older people living in the community. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2019;1(1):CD012424. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012424.pub2
  12. Royal Osteoporosis Society. How to exercise safely for bones. https://theros.org.uk/information-and-support/exercise/how-to-exercise-safely-for-bones/
  13. Royal Osteoporosis Society. Spinal fractures (vertebral fractures). https://theros.org.uk/information-and-support/living-with-osteoporosis-and-broken-bones/spinal-fractures-vertebral-fractures/
  14. Osteoporosis Canada. Too Fit To Fracture. https://osteoporosis.ca/too-fit-to-fracture/
  15. Healthy Bones Australia. Exercise and bone health. https://healthybonesaustralia.org.au/your-bone-health/exercise-bone-health/
  16. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Falls: assessment and prevention in older people and in people 50 and over at higher risk (NG249). 2025. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng249
  17. Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation. Exercise and safe movement. https://www.bonehealthandosteoporosis.org/patients/treatment/exercisesafe-movement/
  18. NHS. Osteoporosis. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/osteoporosis/
  19. NHS. Falls. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/falls/
  20. NHS. Symptoms of a stroke. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stroke/symptoms/
  21. NHS. Heart attack. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heart-attack/
  22. NHS. Fainting. https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/fainting/
  23. NHS. Low blood pressure (hypotension). Page last reviewed 11 July 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/low-blood-pressure-hypotension/
  24. NHS. Deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Page last reviewed 30 April 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/deep-vein-thrombosis-dvt/
  25. NHS. Sepsis. Page last reviewed 14 May 2026. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sepsis/
  26. NHS. Back pain. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/back-pain/
  27. NHS. Abdominal aortic aneurysm. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/abdominal-aortic-aneurysm/
  28. Darouiche RO. Spinal epidural abscess. New England Journal of Medicine. 2006;355(19):2012-2020. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra055111
  29. Cancer Research UK. Spinal cord compression. https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/coping/physically/spinal-cord-compression

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-06.

This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.