The doctor has told me not to do impact exercise …

Impact exercises have a dark and controversial place in healthcare, as impact can increase joint load. For this reason, strategies have been sought so that those people who, due to medical prescription / “precaution”, cannot or should not practice physical exercise with impact, can have options and adaptations with many benefits for them.

What is the impact exercise?

The concept of impact is diversified in terms such as running or jumping, but not the impact itself is the only factor that can affect the structures, but also, and more importantly, the technique of execution of the movements or the posture that is acquired. on a regular basis in our day-to-day life and that modifies patterns such as walking, sitting or climbing stairs.

The impact, when there is not a good technique to carry out some movements, can be a negative factor and should be suppressed, initially, in the training programs. Even more so when there are pathologies for which it is not suitable, and we are not only talking about bone or joint injuries, but also others, for example of a urogynecological type (pelvic floor dysfunctions …).

For this reason, tools such as Active Integral Electrostimulation help the coach to implement strategies that increase strength and functional capacity, and also reduce osteoporosis (it is not because it is electrostimulation, it is BECAUSE IT IS ABOUT PHYSICAL EXERCISE) without affecting the impact articulate.

But well, the impact is good too, and your FAST trainers will find the right formula so that the dose is the best for you.

And why is the impact beneficial?

It increases the density of bone mass, which is why it is beneficial in preventing and treating osteoporosis.

From childhood it is important to perform exercises with impact, such as jumping, since, as indicated by the first evidence in this regard, they increase in the short term the density of bone mass in the hip in 8-year-old children. If the benefits of these activities in early life are sustained into adulthood, the risk of fractures in older people may be decreased (Gunter et al., 2008).

The overwhelming evidence on this type of exercise to preserve bone mass converges in the conclusion of a meta-analysis published in 2009 that says that impact exercises, combined with resistance exercises, are beneficial for bone health in postmenopausal women (population group at high risk of osteoporosis) (Martyn-St James & Carroll, 2009). The same authors did another meta-analysis where the focus was pre-menopausal women, and their conclusion was parallel (Martyn-St James & Carroll, 2010).

Another meta-analysis shows that high impact exercise will not always improve bone mass density, since in the studies that this work explores to be that significant benefits do occur in the hip, but not in the lumbar spine (Babatunde , Forsyth, & Gidlow, 2012).

In fact, age is not an impediment to participate in sports competitions. The National Senior Games (a senior version of the Olympic Games) have attracted the attention of researchers, as it could be hypothesized that athletic performance should not be beneficial, but quite the opposite. Well, actually, through the evaluation of 560 athletes in this competition, it was found that participation in high-impact sports had a positive influence on bone health, even in older athletes. These data show that high-impact exercise is a fundamental tool for maintaining bone density (Leigey, Irrgang, Francis, Cohen, & Wright, 2009).

Calcium intake is also highly recommended in older people to improve bone density, but… is it better to increase calcium intake or perform impact exercises? Other research, also with rats, concludes that impact exercise was more beneficial than a diet rich in calcium for adequate bone growth (Welch, Turner, Devareddy, Arjmandi, & Weaver, 2008).

Osteogenesis, which is the process by which bone mass is formed, has been widely studied in terms of its relationship with exercise, as we have seen. Given the caution of the medical community regarding impact exercises in people, the researchers chose to experiment with the dose in rats. Forty 10-week-old female rats were randomized into four groups: control, exercise with 10 jumps a day, exercise with 40 jumps a day, and exercise with 100 jumps a day. Bone formation rates were much higher in the groups that performed 40 and 100 jumps per day, although the improvement in those that performed 10 jumps was also significant. This is important, since it indicates that a dose of only 10 jumps can lead to benefits in the formation of bone mass (Nagasawa, Honda, Sogo, & Umemura, 2008).

In other dose experiments, also with rats, weekly frequency (no days a week (sedentary group), one session a week, three sessions a week, five days a week and every day) and the daily frequency (no session a day, one session a day and two sessions a day). One session consisted of 10 continuous jumps. The rats were exercised for 8 weeks. In the experiment on the weekly frequency, the results obtained showed that the weight of the tibia increased by 7.5% in the rats that trained one day a week, this being not significant, however, for those that did three, five and seven days it was, with improvement percentages of 12.6%, 12% and 19.8% respectively.

Given all this, we must emphasize that the recommendations go from performing short periods of high-impact exercise during office breaks (Niu et al., 2010) to practicing high-impact aerobic exercise (Liang et al., ything will depend on the physical condition and abilities of the person.

Personal trainers and physical educators (exercise professionals who specialize in exercise for health) know whether or not you should introduce impact exercises in your training, progressively, so that you can obtain all the benefits that this entails.