As we get older our body stops repairing our muscles and our bones as efficiently as it used to in the past, and our muscles atrophy while our bones become more brittle and susceptible to a significant injury.

This is why falling down late in life and breaking a hip is such a disastrous occasion. It may never heal again because of the body’s inability to repair and replace the bone, and on top of that it will cut down on your mobility significantly.

For quite a while doctors, researchers, medical experts and those in the fitness community have tried to figure out how to strengthen bone with similar approaches to strengthening muscle – never really realizing that the process may be identical!

Researchers now believe that it’s possible to strengthen bone while working out and strengthening your muscles

Though your body isn’t going to be able to regenerate new bone on demand the same way that you’re able to when you regenerate new muscle through working out (or else you’d see people with much, much larger – and much longer – bones on a regular basis), the force that you put on your skeleton is going to definitely increase the density of your bones.

While your body continues to grow bone mass until your early 30s or so, almost as soon as your bone stops growing it begins to get brittle.

By exercising – especially with heavyweights in a power lifting style and keeping the intensity high at the same time – you are going to be able to increase the bone density which makes your skeleton a lot more resistant to damage, fracture, but also allows you to recover from injury a lot faster as well.

There are no exercises that build bone specifically but compound less work wonders to get the job done

Remember to keep the weight high (you want to max out at four or five repetitions and that’s it) and hold the lifts at the bottom in the top of the movement to really put as much stress and pressure as you can on your skeletal structure.

You aren’t ever going to find any exercises that specifically work your skeleton and not your muscle groups, but when you do compound lifts – squats, deadlifts, clean and jerks, and the bench press – you’re going to be able to tax your skeletal structure and your central nervous system a lot more than you would have with isolation exercises only. When you add running to this program, you really get the complete workout.

Running adds cardio to this workout to keep your heart strong and ward off cardiovascular disease. This is not only a big risk to your health but is directly connected to your longevity. Keeping arteries clean of fatty build-up has other advantages too.