Exercise is good for your bones, but not all exercise improves bone strength. Certain criteria must be met if your goal is to improve bone mineral density and build stronger bones. The exercise must increase force on your bones and surprise your skeletal system. Elliptical trainers provide non-impact, weight-bearing aerobic activity with lower joint stress than running. They can improve balance, coordination, muscular endurance and aerobic capacity, but after you’ve used an elliptical machine for awhile, it won’t have much effect on bone density.
New and Different Challenges
Bone responds to new or different activity by adding more bone mineral. Once it’s strong enough to handle the activity, it stops increasing its density. So, to continue to build stronger bones, you must continue to challenge your skeletal system with stronger and different loads. In general, when you first begin doing a repetitive aerobic activity like walking or using an elliptical trainer, you’ll see an increase in bone density. But, after a few weeks of regularly doing the same movement, your bones will stop adapting. Still, any exercise program should include some form of aerobic conditioning to improve your cardiovascular health, balance and neuromuscular control. Weight-bearing aerobic exercises such as walking, running, stair climbing and elliptical trainers, are appropriate choices for a well-rounded bone-healthy program.
Impact Is Good for Your Skeleton
To slow bone loss and stimulate the formation of new bone tissue, surprise your skeleton. Impact surprises your bones and stimulates growth. When a bone experiences impact, cells sense the additional stimulation and increase bone density. The impact should be of short duration and followed by a period of rest. For example, you can jump up, land, and then pause after the landing. Because one of the key features of an elliptical machine is that it eliminates impact, you will not get this bone-building benefit when using an elliptical trainer.
Bone growth is stimulated through increased and varied resistance. Activities like weight lifting and functional strength training are your best choice for building bones because they challenge your bones by increasing force in short powerful bursts followed by a period of rest. As your muscles get stronger, they pull harder on the attached bones and stimulate more growth. To be effective, the resistance should equal 60 to 80 percent of your one-repetition maximal effort. It should be difficult to perform more than eight repetitions in a row. While elliptical training is weight-bearing and uses multiple muscle groups, it is difficult to get this much resistance on an elliptical machine, and the activity is continuous and repetitive.
To prevent injury, maintain correct form when using an elliptical training machine. Stand tall, keep your core engaged and relax your shoulders and neck. In the beginning, hold onto the stable handles. Once your balance and coordination improve, you can use the moving handles. If you are too tired to maintain correct form, stop doing the exercise because you will do more harm than good at that point. Elliptical trainers are not recommended for people with advanced osteoporosis.
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