Impact training is having it’s moment in the spotlight.
If you follow osteoporosis, menopause, longevity, or women’s fitness content, you have probably heard some version of the same advice:
You need impact to build bone.
There is good science behind the general idea. Bone responds to mechanical loading, and jumping can expose the skeleton to forces much greater than walking or many other everyday activities.
At Fit Alliance, we regularly incorporate appropriately progressed impact training into programs for postmenopausal women when it is appropriate for the individual.
But impact training is not the end-all, be-all of osteoporosis exercise.
And treating it that way ignores an uncomfortable piece of research that has been publicly available since 1998.
In a randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, Bassey and colleagues had postmenopausal women perform 50 vertical jumps, six days per week, for an entire year.
Their landing forces averaged almost four times body weight.
Their compliance was excellent.
And their bone mineral density did not significantly improve compared with the control group.
That does not mean jumping doesn’t work.
It does mean the story is much more complicated than:
“Jump more = build more bone.”
And that’s an important distinction at a time when impact training for osteoporosis has become increasingly visible.
Impact Training for Osteoporosis: Good Science Can Still Become Oversimplified
Fitness tends to move in trends.
An idea becomes popular, research supporting it gets shared, coaches begin teaching it, and eventually a nuanced scientific concept can turn into a simple social-media message.
Impact training appears to be going through some of that process.
Again, we use impact training at Fit Alliance.
We think it can be extremely valuable.
But when someone presents jumping as the solution for improving bone density after menopause, it is worth asking:
How deeply have they actually investigated the research?
There is a difference between understanding that “impact is good for bone” and understanding:
- what magnitude of impact may be useful,
- how much impact is necessary,
- how frequently it should be performed,
- how it should progress,
- which skeletal sites are being loaded,
- how menopause changes the response,
- how resistance training interacts with impact,
- whether someone has the physical capacity to tolerate those forces,
- and whether greater impact actually produces greater bone adaptation.
Those are much harder questions.
Someone who recently learned that jumping can be osteogenic can easily jump on the bandwagon and start prescribing impact exercises without appreciating how complicated the literature actually is.
The Bassey study is a good example of why we need more nuance.
What Did the Bassey Jumping Study Do?
Bassey and colleagues compared the response to vertical jumping in premenopausal and postmenopausal women.
The exercise protocol was remarkably simple.
Participants performed:
- 50 vertical jumps
- 6 days per week
- 5 sets of 10 jumps
- approximately one jump per second
- with jump volume gradually increased during the first month
The average jump height was only around 8.5 cm, or approximately 3–3.5 inches.
Participants performed two-legged countermovement jumps and landed with flexion through the ankles, knees, and hips. They attended at least one supervised session each week and recorded the remaining jumping sessions themselves.
Despite the relatively low jump height, the forces were substantial.
Premenopausal women averaged landing forces around:
3 times body weight
Postmenopausal women averaged:
almost 4 times body weight
The postmenopausal women also demonstrated a substantially faster rate of force development on landing.
From a purely mechanical perspective, you might expect the older women to have received the larger bone-building stimulus.
But that isn’t what happened.
Jumping Increased Bone Density Before Menopause
The premenopausal women showed favorable changes in femoral bone mineral density after approximately five months.
The exercise group increased femoral BMD by approximately 2.8%, with the clearest between-group effect occurring at the greater trochanter. The difference at the femoral neck approached statistical significance.
So jumping clearly had the potential to stimulate bone.
But when researchers gave essentially the same stimulus to postmenopausal women, the results changed dramatically.
The Postmenopausal Women Jumped for a Year—and Didn’t Build More Bone
The postmenopausal participants completed the intervention for approximately 12 months.
Compliance was impressive: they performed their prescribed jumping on approximately 91% of expected days.
Yet researchers found no significant difference in bone mineral density between the exercise and control groups at the hip or lumbar spine.
This was true whether the women were taking hormone replacement therapy or were estrogen-deplete.
A smaller subgroup continued for 18 months.
Again, researchers found no significant difference between the jumpers and controls.
That finding is particularly interesting because several explanations for a failed exercise intervention don’t fit very well here.
The women didn’t simply ignore the program.
They didn’t jump too gently.
They weren’t only studied for a few weeks.
In fact, compared with the younger women, the postmenopausal participants demonstrated:
- better adherence,
- similar jump heights,
- greater landing forces,
- faster loading rates,
- and a longer intervention.
Yet their BMD response was different.
More Impact Does Not Necessarily Mean More Bone
This may be the most important lesson from the study.
It’s tempting to think about bone loading as a simple dose-response relationship:
More force = more bone.
But biology rarely works that neatly.
As stated earlier, the postmenopausal women generated nearly four times body weight during their landings—more than the younger women—and still did not demonstrate the same bone response.
That should make us cautious about chasing increasingly aggressive jumping, hopping, stomping, or drop-landing drills simply because they generate higher ground-reaction forces.
External ground-reaction force is also not identical to the mechanical strain experienced at every skeletal site.
Bone adaptation is affected by much more than the peak number shown on a force plate.
The direction of force, rate of loading, muscular forces, skeletal geometry, loading history, recovery, hormonal environment, nutritional status, and the novelty of the stimulus may all contribute.
And bone adapts locally.
An exercise that creates a useful stimulus at one portion of the hip does not automatically provide an equally powerful stimulus to the femoral neck, lumbar spine, wrist, or other fracture-prone locations.
But Before We Throw Out Jumping, There Are Major Limitations to This Study
This is where the opposite mistake can happen.
Someone could read the Bassey study and conclude:
“Jumping doesn’t build bone after menopause.”
That would also be an oversimplification.
This study tested one specific jumping program in one specific population.
Understanding those limitations is essential.
Limitation #1: These Were Not Women With Significant Osteoporosis
This may be the most important limitation for someone reading this article because she has osteoporosis.
The researchers specifically excluded postmenopausal women whose BMD was more than 2 standard deviations below young-adult values because they were concerned about exposing women with substantially lower bone density to high-impact exercise.
In other words, the researchers themselves were cautious about simply prescribing repetitive jumping to women with very low bone density.
Participants were also screened for health conditions that could make jumping inappropriate.
Women with conditions such as arthritis or back pain that represented contraindications to the exercise were excluded. BMI also had to fall between 20 and 31.
That matters because the postmenopausal women we work with in the real world frequently have combinations of:
- osteoporosis,
- previous fractures,
- arthritis,
- joint replacements,
- scoliosis,
- back pain,
- balance limitations,
- reduced muscle mass,
- poor cardiovascular conditioning,
- previous cancer treatment,
- hypermobility,
- or years of inactivity.
The safety and effectiveness of jumping cannot simply be extrapolated from relatively healthy research participants to every woman with osteoporosis.
Limitation #2: It Was Jumping, Not a Comprehensive Exercise Program
The intervention was remarkably brief.
The actual jumping portion amounted to only a few minutes.
There was no comprehensive progressive resistance-training program alongside it.
There were no progressively loaded squats.
No deadlifts.
No weighted carries.
No progressively heavier presses or pulls.
No systematic power-training progression.
No meaningful cardiovascular-conditioning program.
No individualized balance progression.
The researchers themselves pointed out that successful exercise programs in postmenopausal women frequently involved 30–40 minutes of exercise such as resistance training or intermittent weight-bearing activity, rather than approximately two minutes of jumping.
That distinction is enormously important.
Modern bone-health training should not be reduced to asking:
“Are you jumping?”
A better question is:
“What does the entire training stimulus look like?”
Limitation #3: The Program Was Barely Progressive
This may be the limitation most relevant to how we train today.
The participants gradually increased the number of jumps during the first month until they reached 50.
After that, the basic stimulus remained largely the same.
There was no systematic progression of:
- external load,
- jump height,
- jump direction,
- movement complexity,
- unilateral loading,
- resistance-training intensity,
- or other major training variables.
The human body adapts.
The same stimulus that is unusual during week one may be much less novel during month six.
Progressive overload is fundamental to exercise programming.
For muscle, we progressively manipulate resistance, volume, range of motion, exercise selection, and proximity to fatigue.
For power, we can manipulate velocity, load, movement complexity, and intent.
It would be surprising if bone were somehow exempt from the broader principle that training stimuli need to remain sufficiently challenging as the body adapts.
So Bassey does not tell us that a well-designed, progressively overloaded impact program is ineffective after menopause.
It tells us that repeating essentially the same 50 low-height jumps for months was not enough to produce a detectable BMD advantage in this population.
That’s a very different conclusion.
Limitation #4: The Jumps Were Only About Three Inches High
Calling the intervention “high impact” can create the mental image of aggressive box jumps or depth jumps.
That’s not what these women were doing.
Average jump height was only around 8.5 cm—roughly three inches.
The landing forces were substantial, but the movement itself was relatively modest.
A modern impact program could potentially manipulate jump height, speed, direction, external load, single- versus double-leg loading, or other variables.
However, that does not mean the solution is simply to jump higher.
The women were already experiencing very large external forces.
Increasing forces without first building the capacity to tolerate them could simply increase stress on joints, tendons, cartilage, and other tissues without producing proportionally greater skeletal benefits.
Limitation #5: It Doesn’t Tell Us the Optimal Impact Dose
The study tested:
50 jumps × 6 days per week.
It did not systematically compare that prescription with:
- 10 jumps,
- 20 jumps,
- 50 jumps,
- 100 jumps,
- two days per week,
- three days per week,
- six days per week,
- multiple shorter sessions,
- greater recovery between sessions,
- or different impact intensities.
Therefore, we cannot conclude from this study that 50 impacts per day is the ideal target—or that more would have produced a better result.
Interestingly, current osteoporosis guidance still includes impact exercise, but it generally emphasizes gradual progression and combining impact with strength training rather than treating jumping as a stand-alone solution. The Royal Osteoporosis Society currently recommends building toward moderate-impact activities when appropriate and specifically notes that high-impact exercise is not required for improving bone strength.
Limitation #6: DEXA Does Not Tell Us Everything About Bone Strength
The primary outcome was bone mineral density measured with DEXA at the lumbar spine and proximal femur.
DEXA is extremely useful clinically, but bone strength is more complicated than a single areal BMD measurement.
Bone geometry, cortical thickness, trabecular architecture, material properties, and where bone is added can influence mechanical strength without necessarily creating a large change on DEXA.
The Bassey study therefore tells us that this jumping intervention did not produce a detectable advantage in the measured BMD outcomes.
It cannot tell us that nothing about the skeleton changed.
More recent research reinforces this distinction. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis examining bone structure found some site-specific structural benefits from moderate- to high-impact exercise, including an improvement in distal tibial trabecular volumetric BMD among postmenopausal women, while other skeletal sites showed no significant response.
Once again, the answer isn’t simply “impact works” or “impact doesn’t work.”
Where, how, and in whom matter.
Limitation #7: The 18-Month Follow-Up Was Small
The 12-month postmenopausal sample was reasonably substantial, with 123 women included in the analysis.
But only 38 women continued into the extended 18-month phase, and the estrogen-deplete comparison eventually included only 10 exercisers and 14 controls.
That means the longer-term portion of the study had considerably less statistical power.
The lack of improvement at 18 months is interesting and consistent with the 12-month findings, but we should not treat the 18-month results as equally strong evidence.
Limitation #8: Most Sessions Were Not Directly Supervised
Participants were required to attend supervised jumping sessions at least once per week and recorded their other sessions on exercise cards.
Reported compliance was excellent.
But researchers were not directly observing every jump performed at home.
Landing mechanics, effort, consistency, fatigue, and actual execution could therefore have varied.
This limitation applies to many long-term exercise studies, but it is still worth recognizing.
Limitation #9: Calcium Intake Was Controlled More Than It Often Is in the Real World
Researchers assessed dietary calcium in the postmenopausal women and supplemented participants when needed to bring total calcium intake to approximately 1,400–1,650 mg per day.
That was useful experimentally because insufficient calcium could otherwise have limited bone adaptation.
But it also means this was not simply a group of women following their normal lifestyle.
Nutrition had been deliberately addressed.
More broadly, real-world bone health also depends on factors such as adequate protein, vitamin D status, energy availability, medications, hormones, and underlying medical conditions.
Exercise is a powerful tool.
It is not operating in isolation.
The Study Wasn’t a Failure
There is another point worth emphasizing.
The lack of increased BMD does not mean the exercise was useless.
The postmenopausal women showed improvements in measures such as power and dynamic balance over the study period, although many between-group comparisons were not statistically significant. Among women taking HRT, improvement in dynamic balance was significantly greater in the exercise group.
And this highlights something important about osteoporosis training.
The goal is not merely to improve a DEXA score.
Fractures usually occur when a vulnerable bone encounters enough force to break.
Often, that force occurs during a fall.
Building stronger muscles, improving power, practicing balance, maintaining mobility, and developing the ability to react when balance is lost can therefore be enormously important even when DEXA changes are modest.
International osteoporosis exercise recommendations consequently emphasize multicomponent programs incorporating resistance and balance training, not impact exercise in isolation.
So Does Impact Training Build Bone After Menopause?
Potentially, yes.
And this study should not be interpreted as evidence that postmenopausal women shouldn’t jump.
Subsequent research collectively suggests that exercise can positively affect bone density in postmenopausal women, although effects are typically modest and depend on factors including exercise type and skeletal site. A large 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis found an overall positive effect of exercise training on BMD in postmenopausal women.
Impact loading may be part of that strategy.
But Bassey gives us an important warning:
Producing a large ground-reaction force is not the same thing as guaranteeing bone growth.
And simply adding jumps to a workout does not automatically make it a sophisticated osteoporosis program.
What We Do at Fit Alliance
At Fit Alliance, we often use impact training.
For the right person, that may eventually include:
heel drops or controlled stomping
↓
low-level impact drills
↓
small hops or jumps
↓
landing mechanics
↓
repeated jumping
↓
higher or faster jumping
↓
multidirectional impact
↓
appropriately loaded or more advanced impact
But not everyone starts at the same place, and not everyone needs to reach the same endpoint.
Someone who has been sedentary for years may need to develop basic strength, balance, cardiovascular conditioning, coordination, and tissue tolerance before repetitive jumping makes sense.
Someone with a joint replacement, significant arthritis, previous vertebral fractures, scoliosis, hypermobility, or another chronic condition may require an entirely different progression.
Current osteoporosis recommendations similarly emphasize considering fracture history, physical capacity, impairments, and previous activity when deciding whether higher-impact exercise is appropriate.
That’s why simply handing every postmenopausal woman a prescription for “50 jumps per day” misses the point.
Resistance Training and Impact Training Shouldn’t Be Competitors
One of the stranger developments in bone-health fitness is the tendency to debate whether people should lift heavy or perform impact exercise.
We don’t think those need to be competing ideas.
Muscle contractions themselves generate substantial forces through bone.
Progressive resistance exercises such as squats, hinges, presses, pulls, and loaded carries can expose the skeleton to significant muscular forces while simultaneously increasing the muscle mass and strength needed to function safely.
Impact provides another type of stimulus characterized by rapid loading.
A well-designed program can use both.
Research and expert consensus increasingly support this broader, multicomponent approach rather than relying on one exercise modality.
The Bone-Health Fitness Industry Should Be Careful With Absolutes
The Bassey study was published over 20 yeras ago.
This information isn’t new.
For more than two decades, we’ve had evidence showing that even frequent, relatively high-force jumping does not automatically increase BMD in postmenopausal women.
That doesn’t make impact training bad.
It makes the physiology interesting.
And it should make anyone prescribing exercise for osteoporosis a little more humble about absolute statements.
If someone tells you:
“Women with osteoporosis need to jump.”
A reasonable follow-up should ask:
“Which women, what type of jumping, how much, how hard, how often, how will it progress, and what else is included in the program?”
If those questions don’t have thoughtful answers, the program may be following the trend more than the science.
The Real Goal: Build a More Resilient Person
At Fit Alliance, we’re not trying to create the largest ground-reaction force possible.
We’re trying to build the most capable person possible.
That includes improving:
- bone strength,
- muscle mass,
- maximal strength,
- power,
- balance,
- coordination,
- cardiovascular fitness,
- mobility,
- movement confidence,
- and the ability to tolerate progressively greater physical demands.
For some women, jumping will become an important part of that process.
For others, resistance training may provide most of the meaningful loading.
And for many, the best solution will include both.
The goal isn’t to follow the latest osteoporosis exercise trend.
The goal is to apply the principles of progressive training to the individual standing in front of us.
Impact training is a tool.
A potentially very useful one.
But it isn’t magic—and we’ve had evidence suggesting that since the late 90s.
References
Bassey EJ, Rothwell MC, Littlewood JJ, Pye DW. Pre- and postmenopausal women have different bone mineral density responses to the same high-impact exercise. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. 1998;13(12):1805–1813. doi:10.1359/jbmr.1998.13.12.1805.
Mohebbi R, Shojaa M, Kohl M, von Stengel S, Jakob F, et al. Exercise training and bone mineral density in postmenopausal women: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies with emphasis on potential moderators. Osteoporosis International. 2023;34:1145–1178. doi:10.1007/s00198-023-06682-1.
Ng CA, Gandham A, Mesinovic J, Owen PJ, Ebeling PR, Scott D. Effects of moderate- to high-impact exercise training on bone structure across the lifespan: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. 2023;38(11):1612–1634. doi:10.1002/jbmr.4899.
Giangregorio LM, Papaioannou A, MacIntyre NJ, Ashe MC, Heinonen A, Shipp K, Wark JD, McGill S, Keller H, Jain R, Laprade J, Cheung AM. Too Fit To Fracture: exercise recommendations for individuals with osteoporosis or osteoporotic vertebral fracture. Osteoporosis International. 2014;25(3):821–835. doi:10.1007/s00198-013-2523-2.
Royal Osteoporosis Society. Impact exercise to help make your bones stronger. Last reviewed June 1, 2026.
Royal Osteoporosis Society. How to exercise safely for bones. Last reviewed June 1, 2026.
