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
It sounds like you’ve cultivated a very gym positive space, and that’s great! But yes it far more common still for women to be repulsed by the idea of lifting weights, often because of fears of “becoming too big” or “looking like a man”
Acceptance of lifting is absolutely growing among women, as it should be, but there’s a lot of work left to do!
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
Do we have any actual evidence of this, or is this just Faustian speculation?
Whenever there is as new, truly revolutionary medical treatment, there is always a mountain of fear mongering around it. People just don’t want to accept that we actually can make real progress. Hell, any time there is any new treatment discusses, the top posts are always people saying that only the rich will ever be able to afford it. Of course, every treatment starts that way, and countless treatments that were once only for the rich can now be enjoyed by everyone.
I think it’s a logical error that people make, simply because they are wary of scams. It’s generally healthy to be skeptical of miraculous promises. But that goes too far when people replace “we should treat this skeptically” with “there simply must be some horrible cost to this revolutionary good thing. I will assume there is one, even if there is no evidence for it. Anything that good has to be a deal with the Devil carrying some horrible cost.”
Funny enough, Cory Doctorow covered something similar in his book Makers. There was a therapy (I forget, either injection or gene therapy) that led to obese people being able to eat whatever they want and still get thin. They ended up essentially skeletal and brittle in the end over years, turned out it’s very bad for you and they ended up needed to eat like 10k calories a day to survive.
I hate to tell you, but this sort of anti-science medical fearmongering is half the reason why millennials and older had to suffer through their entire formative years and young adult lives dealing with untreated ADHD by treating help as if it’s makes people lesser than others.
They’re just kids! They don’t need no ritalin, that’s just how boys are! He just needs to focus, and that’s on the school to figure out! Besides, what happens when they stop taking it, all the good work you’ve done for 10 years including the capability of getting a good job will just fall apart when the apocalypse hits!
Okay, Bill. Now don’t forget to take your omeprazole and losartan heart meds before you have to visit the ER again from thinking you’re having a heart attack, or actually having one again.
Not sure it’s a generation thing. For example, Gen X grew up with ladies workout videos, thigh master, the little white guy with the Afro, etc. Could this be a reaction to the body positivity movement?
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
Is this actually true? Like half the women I know lift and gymfluencers is a huge thing
It sounds like you’ve cultivated a very gym positive space, and that’s great! But yes it far more common still for women to be repulsed by the idea of lifting weights, often because of fears of “becoming too big” or “looking like a man”
Acceptance of lifting is absolutely growing among women, as it should be, but there’s a lot of work left to do!
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
Will be even more fun when the ozempic / wegovy / semaglutude users start falling apart.
It’s a serious concern. To properly lose weight with the support of these drugs you need resistance training and to eat right
Do we have any actual evidence of this, or is this just Faustian speculation?
Whenever there is as new, truly revolutionary medical treatment, there is always a mountain of fear mongering around it. People just don’t want to accept that we actually can make real progress. Hell, any time there is any new treatment discusses, the top posts are always people saying that only the rich will ever be able to afford it. Of course, every treatment starts that way, and countless treatments that were once only for the rich can now be enjoyed by everyone.
I think it’s a logical error that people make, simply because they are wary of scams. It’s generally healthy to be skeptical of miraculous promises. But that goes too far when people replace “we should treat this skeptically” with “there simply must be some horrible cost to this revolutionary good thing. I will assume there is one, even if there is no evidence for it. Anything that good has to be a deal with the Devil carrying some horrible cost.”
Funny enough, Cory Doctorow covered something similar in his book Makers. There was a therapy (I forget, either injection or gene therapy) that led to obese people being able to eat whatever they want and still get thin. They ended up essentially skeletal and brittle in the end over years, turned out it’s very bad for you and they ended up needed to eat like 10k calories a day to survive.
I hate to tell you, but this sort of anti-science medical fearmongering is half the reason why millennials and older had to suffer through their entire formative years and young adult lives dealing with untreated ADHD by treating help as if it’s makes people lesser than others.
They’re just kids! They don’t need no ritalin, that’s just how boys are! He just needs to focus, and that’s on the school to figure out! Besides, what happens when they stop taking it, all the good work you’ve done for 10 years including the capability of getting a good job will just fall apart when the apocalypse hits!
Okay, Bill. Now don’t forget to take your omeprazole and losartan heart meds before you have to visit the ER again from thinking you’re having a heart attack, or actually having one again.
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?
Not sure it’s a generation thing. For example, Gen X grew up with ladies workout videos, thigh master, the little white guy with the Afro, etc. Could this be a reaction to the body positivity movement?
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
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
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.
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
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.
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