Building bones in childhood

The bone strength you have in your 50s and beyond is built in the adolescent years.

Adolescence is the optimal time to maximise peak bone mass (PBM), that is, the strength or density of your bones.

During adolescence, we want high-impact and multi-directional exercise; think netball, basketball, gymnastics, but balanced against recovery, which allows for a balance of bone building and remodelling. Failure to recover well, or too much load, can cause bone breakdown, leading to bone stress injury or fracture.

In adolescents who do non-weight-bearing sports such as swimming, water polo, or cycling, we should add an additional bone stimulus in the form of early resistance training.

Alongside training and recovery, optimising nutrition in the adolescent years is key - adequate fuel for the demands of life and sport, maintaining carbohydrate intake, calcium and exposure to sunlight (Vitamin D).

Key vulnerabilities in childhood to adequate bone health include overload or dropout, under-fuelling (low energy availability), missing the window to build bone and low exposure (especially females) to resistance training.

What we do for bones matters more in adolescence than any other time.

Load. Strengthen. Fuel. Recover