Have you ever wondered why people say that lifting weights benefits you beyond building muscular strength?
Although we all love to feel being able to push heavier weights, there are a lot more physiological benefits to lifting weights than simply your muscles growing and changing.
Enter Julius Wolff, a 19th Century German anatomist and surgeon. She developed a concept that eventually became a widely accepted law in the scientific community. Her idea was that not only muscle and ligaments, but also bones, could grow stronger in response to mechanical stress.
What causes mechanical stress and how can it positively affect your bones?
Mechanical stress in biomechanical terms is the distribution of forces being put on the body to fight any change in position, meaning any time you are moving your body there is mechanical stress, and the more you add resistance or challenge, such as jumping or adding weight, it scales upwards. When your body feels this mechanical stress, it responds accordingly by not only strengthening your muscles, but your bones too.
How do our bones get stronger and why is it important?
Osteocytes, which are functional bone cells, can actually feel mechanical forces and will contact other bone cells that are responsible for breaking down and rebuilding bone. This process is similar to the way the body responds to broken bones, just on a much smaller scale. This is extremely important in bone health and is known as bone homeostasis.
Essentially, all of the tugging and pushing your muscles do on your bones forces them to get stronger, and therefore get YOU stronger.
Whether you are at the beginning of your lifting journey and working out for health and longevity, or an older person working on building bone strength and density as you age, bone remodeling is an extremely important part of your physical health.