Balance and Body Restoration

⚠️ For entertainment/educational purposes only, not medical advice. We always recommend consulting your physician before starting any new exercise program and seeking assessment from a physical therapist to ensure proper form and safety with exercises for osteoporosis.

**Meet the drill that comes before every deadlift, kettlebell swing, or hip hinge we teach: hands-on-knees neutral spine.** 👇

Most people have almost no awareness of their own spine — they can’t tell you if it’s rounded or straight, because they’ve simply haven’t had a reason to, that is until they’re being told to lift weight to strengthen their bones. That’s why just learning the movement and positioning should be the real starting point for every deadlift progression.

In this drill, Thuy pushes her hands into her knees — that pressure engages the lats, creating stability through the spine. From there, she’s activating the small intervertebral stabilizers and learning to *feel* what neutral actually feels like, not just what it looks like.

This isn’t osteoporosis-specific. It’s foundational to strength training, period.

Two things we watch closely:

1️⃣ **Overarching the lower back.** The instinct to “straighten the spine” often overcorrects into the lumbar spine. Neutral isn’t arched, and it isn’t rounded — it’s right in the middle, like a straight line.

2️⃣ **Kyphosis in the upper back.** Thoracic rounding tends to increase with age, especially with today’s society where everything pulls our shoulders forward. Kyphosis can also shift your center of mass forward, and the upper lumbar spine (especially L1, a common fracture site) becomes pressurized with constant forward-pulling load.

That’s why this movement matters beyond bone density. It strengthens the muscles that help you stand taller, builds the bracing that lets you move through life more confidently, and helps talk pressure off the vertebra most vulnerable to fracture. 🦴

⚠️ **Disclaimer:** We do not advocate that people begin jumping or impact training without proper medical clearance and a professional movement assessment first.

We’ve been progressing Julie’s impact training for months. Here’s what she’s up to now.

Julie hadn’t done any real impact work in years — a history of knee issues made her rightfully cautious. And that caution is worth respecting: impact is one of the most effective ways to build bone, and one of the hardest to execute well.

Wolff’s Law: bone remodels in response to the mechanical load placed on it. Impact — jumping, landing, absorbing force — creates exactly that stimulus. But physiology is only half the story. Most people aren’t ready for it: arthritic joints, weak muscles, inflamed tendons, no strength baseline.

If that’s you, impact should be LAST on your priority list, not first. Jumping into jumping is how people get hurt and quit on the idea entirely.

But “not ready yet” ≠ “never.” Here’s how we think about the progression:

1️⃣ **No training through pain.** Pain shuts down the muscles you need to both produce and absorb force. Fix that first, always.

2️⃣ **Strength, stability, and range come before impact.** A joint needs the strength to control a landing and the mobility to move through range before it’s asked to absorb force.

3️⃣ **Tendons condition slowly.** They adapt far slower than muscle — loaded progressively, over months, no rushing it.

4️⃣ **Keep intensity low early on.** This is what people skip. Julie’s early loads were light, almost playful. Not winded, not sore, no recovery days needed. If you do jump, or do impact work, and it feels like nothing happened — you’re doing it right.

Progress comes from slowly raising the ceiling over time — not pushing hard on day one. Patient, slow, consistent — that’s how safe impact training is built. 🦴

📣 Join us live for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2, September 5th. Comment “BLUEPRINT” for the link.

**Thuy, demonstrating a 5lbs front-loaded goblet squat with a chair.**

This combines two things we teach constantly: the goblet squat and the sit-to-stand.

Holding the weight out front, goblet-style, changes the exercise in an important way compared to a regular bodyweight sit-to-stand. The front load acts as a counterbalance, pulling your center of gravity slightly forward. That lets you sit back further into your hips instead of falling straight down, and it adds real resistance to the movement — turning a functional daily task into an actual strength-building exercise.

The chair itself is doing real work here too. It gives you a consistent depth target and a safety net if control breaks down. But the goal isn’t to use it as a landing pad.

The cue: don’t just plop down onto the chair. Control the descent the entire way. Let your hips lightly tap the seat, then immediately drive back up, without ever fully relaxing into a seated rest.

Go slow. Stay controlled. Really try to contract your muscles hard through the whole rep — feel the quads, glutes, and core actually working, not just going through the motion. At the end of the day, it’s that tension and contraction in the muscle that sends the signal to build bone. Speed and reps matter far less than the quality of the effort in each one.

📣 Join us live for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2, September 5th. Comment “BLUEPRINT” for the link.

⚠️ Educational purposes only, not medical advice.

**The single leg RDL — one of the most important exercises we teach in our program.**

This move is pretty much a hip hinge done on one leg: The standing leg controls the descent, reaching leg extends back to counterbalance the upper body as the torso lowers toward the floor while hips stay square and spine stays neutral. Simple to describe. Genuinely difficult to do well — but absolutely worth training.

Here we’re going through Level 1 and Level 2. Level 1 starts with a dowel — it gives real-time feedback on the range and positioning, letting the person feel what a neutral spine and squared hips actually look like in this movement before pulling that support away. Level 2 takes the dowel out entirely, reinforcing the same pattern now that it’s had a chance to sink in. What looks like a small change asks for a lot more at once — control, stability, balance, and real strength, all working together without anything to lean on.

There’s a lot of conversation right now about lifting heavy and impact training for bone health, and we get it — the research supports both, and we program both. But there’s a piece that gets talked about far less: stability. Making sure the joints you’re loading are stable. Making sure you’re balanced side to side. Prioritizing the health and function of the smaller stabilizing muscles as much as the big power movements.

That balance work isn’t glamorous, but it’s foundational. Asymmetries and weak stabilizers are often what’s actually behind pain, poor movement quality, and the injuries that keep people from ever getting to the heavy lifting or the impact work in the first place. Get the stability piece right, and everything improves.

And here’s the part to this exercise: once you own this movement, you can progress to doing this with a few kettlebells to gives you a real strength stimulus, single-leg, without ever needing to load a heavy bar.

We break down exactly this kind of progression in our free live workshop on September 5th. Comment “BLUEPRINT” and we’ll send you the link.
⚠️ Educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult your physician before starting any new exercise program.
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Recently, we’ve been sharing videos of clients doing amazing things — jumping, swinging kettlebells, lifting heavy weights to build bone strength. But equally impressive are clients like Carole, who show up week after week not necessarily to build bone density, but to maintain her independence and mobility despite a host of other health challenges.

Three years ago, Carole could barely stand up straight for more than a minute due to severe back pain and sciatica. After six failed injections, doctors told her it was just old age, and there wasn’t much more they could do. But she kept trying. When we started working with her, we noticed something that had been missed — her leg muscles had become significantly weak, and her back had been working overtime, compensating for strength her legs no longer had. Once we built her legs, hips, and back back up, the pressure came off her spine, and she was able to stand, walk, and even start cooking meals again.

Since then, she’s battled a host of other health issues. Some weeks her energy isn’t there. Other weeks she’s moving better than she has in months. But she sticks with it. She stays consistent, and she shows up and puts in the work almost every single week.

Is she lifting heavy weights, jumping, or doing incredible feats of strength? No. But with other health issues constantly pulling her backward, her consistency and effort are what allow her to hold her ground, not lose it, and keep her independence and mobility intact. That’s just as impressive as anything we’ve ever filmed — a product of pure will, work ethic, and the desire to stay mobile and independent, no matter what else is working against her.

📣 Join us live for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2, September 5th. We’ll be talking about building stronger bones for osteoporosis — but more importantly, giving you a safe, effective framework for strength training no matter where you’re starting from. Comment “BLUEPRINT” for the link.

**Michelle, progressing to 50lbs deadlifts (double 25s).**

If you’ve been following our client Michelle’s strength journey, you might know she started as a complete beginner. Newly diagnosed with osteoporosis, she wanted to give strength training a real try before going on medication.

She initially started with exercises she found online, following along on her own. But something didn’t feel right. She wasn’t sure if she was doing the movements with the right form, and couldn’t tell if what she was doing was actually working for her.

That’s completely normal — it’s the difference between “doing exercises for your bones” and “learning” exercise for your bones. Strength is a skill. It’s acquired the same way any other skill is, like dancing, golf, or playing the piano.

Eight weeks ago, even with a healthy baseline — no pain, no injuries, reasonably fit — Michelle had little to no experience with weightlifting. So we started her with just a 5lbs weight.

That’s where we taught her the fundamentals: hip position, a neutral spine, engaging the lats, building tension through the hips, breathing, finishing the lift, descending correctly.

As she practiced consistently, those patterns became embedded. She started to feel the right muscles working. Confidence built. No pain. And she started unlocking power in her hips she didn’t know she had.

5lbs became 10, then 25, then 35.

Now, eight weeks in, she’s pulling 50lbs from the floor with relative ease — and a real sense of accomplishment.

Progress like this doesn’t happen on the same timeline for everyone. And to some, 50lbs might not seem impressive. But for someone just starting out, it’s a genuine milestone. And she’s only getting started.

📣 Want to learn how to progress like this, and know when it’s right to move up? Join us live for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2, September 5th. Comment “BLUEPRINT” for the link.

⚠️ Educational purposes only, not medical advice.

**Learning to squat starts here.**

The squat is one of the most effective ways to load your hips and spine and build real bone density. It’s also deeply functional — how you get up off the floor, out of a chair, on and off the toilet. A pattern your body relies on every day.

But if you’ve never trained before, a deep goblet squat, a barbell, or a jump squat probably isn’t the place to start. Jumping straight into them without building the pattern first is how people get hurt, or lose confidence before they even get going.

That’s why we start with the sit-to-stand. Same hip/knee/ankle mechanics, same demand for control, just a chair as your depth target and your bodyweight as the load.

Starting at your level isn’t a compromise, it’s the whole point of training. Before increasing load, depth, or frequency, you have to own the pattern and be comfortable with it first. That’s what this exercise is really teaching.

**What we’re coaching for:**
→ Dig your feet in and drive with intention. No rocking, no swinging your arms for momentum. Just deliberate muscle activation.
→ Chest up, posture tall. Engage your upper back and let your eyes lead the way.
→ Tap the chair, don’t drop into it. That control is where real ownership of this pattern starts.

It looks simple. But harder than it may seem. And that’s exactly why it’s a good place to start for those just starting out and unsure of their baseline.

Want the principles and progressions behind exercises like this? Join us live for The Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2 — Saturday, September 5th, 10am PT. Free. Comment “BLUEPRINT” for the link.

*For entertainment/educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult your physician before starting any new exercise program, especially for osteoporosis.*

**Michelle, 66, newly diagnosed with osteoporosis — This clip is from week 7 of her program, demonstrating incline pushups.**

The incline pushup is part of our “horizontal push” movement pattern — one of the foundational patterns in our program, right alongside the squat, the hinge, and the pull.

It matters for osteoporosis for a reason people don’t always expect: the wrist and forearm are just as susceptible to fracture as the hip or spine, especially in a fall, when the instinct is to catch yourself with an outstretched arm. Building real pressing strength through the arms and shoulders builds resilience right where that risk lives.

There’s also a common misconception about pushups — that they’re mainly a chest or triceps exercise. And yes, they absolutely work those muscles. But we approach it from a much bigger picture.

Watch the first clip. Michelle loses her core stability partway through, her body starts to twist, and she has to fight her way to the top.

In the second round, we cued her to squeeze her glutes and brace her abs. That simple cue creates stability through her core, which keeps her spine locked in place — and makes the entire movement noticeably easier to perform.

That’s the real lesson here. With almost every exercise we teach, we’re trying to train the whole body to work as a single unit. Certain exercises may prioritize some muscles over others, but it’s important never to lose sight of the fact that you’re training your entire body — not just isolated parts.

📣 Want more breakdowns like this? Join us Saturday, September 5th, for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2. Comment “BLUEPRINT” and we’ll send you the link to register.

⚠️ Educational purposes only, not medical advice.

**Julie, working through agility ladder drills.**

If you want to build stronger bones, the research says you need to be lifting heavy, jumping, and doing impact exercises to trigger new bone formation. All true, all backed by science and research.

But there’s a piece of health that gets lost once someone gets an osteoporosis diagnosis: muscle, joint, and tendon health. Because if you’re in pain when you exercise, you’re not going to be able to build bone at all — the two aren’t separate goals, one depends on the other.

And here’s a question worth sitting with: what if you have decreased bone density, but you also have great reflexes, fast feet, good balance and stability? That combination can genuinely help prevent the fall from ever happening in the first place — which, for bone health, might matter just as much as density itself.

That’s exactly what we’re working on today with Julie.

She’s as strong as they come — works hard, shows up disciplined, no excuses. We’ve recently started adding more jump and impact training into her program. But she has a history of knee issues — nothing severe, but enough that we’re proceeding with real caution. So instead of rushing into heavy impact, we’re taking a slow, consistent approach: prepping the muscles around her calf, foot, and ankle to develop spring-like, elastic properties, starting with light, almost playful loads, and closely gauging how her joints respond over time.

All the while, we’re building footwork, agility, and reflexes, with a touch of impact worked in — and yes, having a little fun along the way.

It’s okay to vary your training. Venture into new territory. Build a complete version of yourself — one that includes strength, yes, but also mobility, control, agility, and some genuine enjoyment in the process.

📣 Join us live for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2, September 5th. Comment “BLUEPRINT” for the link.

**Pam, doing the split step jump on a 6” step with 1 riser.**

Our video showing the time lapse of her learning this movement crossed 580k views. People obviously noticed that we started her on a 6” step with 1 riser, and a few weeks later dropped her down to 4” without a riser. Why? Short answer: we started her too high. Our mistake — we adapt and we learn, so we brought her back down to a 4” step, and she nailed it.

But after hearing about the recent “controversy” over the 4” vs 6” step, Pam was up for the challenge. So here she is, doing her 6” split step jumps with exactly the strength, power, and control we want to see out of this exercise.

We also got some comments about her foot being halfway off the edge of the step. That’s intentional. She’s using her calf to push off the edge, generating a little extra spring and lift as she launches upward. If her foot sat flat and fully planted, there’d be no spring loaded in that calf — and no extra power to launch with.

None of this happened overnight. It took a ton of strength to get here — specifically through the quads, glutes, and core. Pam is also fortunate to have no arthritis in her joints, along with great range of motion and strong eccentric control, which is exactly what keeps her tendons protected under a load like this.

⚠️ Not for at-home use. Pam’s program was built over years under clinical supervision. Not recommended for beginners or those with fracture/injury history. Get medical clearance and work with a skilled clinician before any rigorous program, especially for osteoporosis.

📣 Want to learn to build real strength and confidence like Pam’s, without the guesswork of piecing it together on your own? Join us live for the Strong Bones Blueprint: Part 2 on September 5th — we’ll walk you through the exact principles and progressions we use with our own patients, from where you’re starting today all the way to advanced work like this. You don’t need any experience to get full value, and you don’t need to have seen Part 1 either.

Comment “BLUEPRINT” and we’ll send you the link to register 👇