JJ Virgin tells Shannon that building muscle safely with osteoporosis means loading your spine and joints gradually, not quickly. Start with movement practice and proper form before adding weight. Connective tissue adapts slowly, so progression must be methodical to avoid the repeated injuries that come from pushing too fast.
Shannon says, since my diagnosis of osteoporosis, I always injure myself when I try to work out to gain muscle. So this is really a challenge because the most important thing you can do with osteoporosis, of course, is to load your spine and joints and help you build muscle, but you have to do it carefully, right? And so what I would recommend here is that you find a really good physical therapist or an exercise physiologist who who's got a background in corrective exercise who can work with you to help you build up gradually so that you don't get hurt. The important thing when you're doing resistance training is when you're first doing it, focus on just the movement and just becoming very aware of the muscles. This is where doing electrical muscle stim like the E20 workout can be great to train you to really learn how to fire those muscles. First couple weeks you're doing exercise is just really learning how to do the movements carefully so that you don't get hurt. As you start to add resistance and challenge your muscles, you want to do this gradually too because you're really getting your connective tissue to get fired up. And your point of weakness is not going to be your muscle, it's actually going to be your connective tissue. So you want to do this gradually. I just wonder, since your diagnosis, if you just have been going too fast and too hard out the gate, and if you need to do a little bit slower progression. That would be my recommendation.
