Build strength at your pace.
Progress means gradually doing more with control. Repeating an agreed weight while learning can be useful progress, too. Your care plan and recovery come before a week number.
A routine you can keep building
Your path over eight months and beyond
Start where you are and build capacity over time. These are review points, not deadlines or promises of a particular weight or bone-density result. Rest, repeating a load and getting support can all be the right next step.
Starting weeks
Learn your movements
Use your personalized starting route. Learn setup, support and effort, then record what you actually do and how it feels.
As a routine develops
Build consistency before challenge
Practise within your agreed targets. For weighted lifts, comparable sets, effort, responses and recovery inform whether to repeat or review a small increase.
At the end of each block
Review and keep going
Reassess health changes, experience and equipment. A completed block can start a fresh sequence while keeping your history. Neither a new block nor a new month increases weight automatically.
Around month 8 and beyond
Review what has changed
Look at your recorded loads, consistency and confidence with your clinician. Review everyday function and the next training block; ask when another DXA is useful. Workout totals do not measure bone-density change.
Heavier lifting is a review decision. Foundation and Build support practice at your agreed level; high-intensity LIFTMOR-style lifting and high-impact training require individual assessment and qualified direct supervision. Membership does not provide that supervision.
Progress you can work toward
Appropriate weight-bearing and resistance exercise can help build or maintain bone density. That makes a consistent routine worthwhile, alongside nutrition and any treatment your clinician recommends. BHOF exercise guidance ↗
Your early checkpoints: skill and everyday strength
Watch your setup, control and confidence as you practise. Record actual repetitions, loads and effort, and notice how everyday tasks feel. These give you useful things to review before a repeat scan; they do not measure bone-density change.
Your longer-term goal: build or preserve bone
In LIFTMOR, screened postmenopausal women trained with close supervision twice weekly for eight months. Average spine density rose 2.9%, versus a 1.2% decline with low-intensity home exercise; femoral-neck density changed +0.3% versus −1.9%. Strength and physical function improved too. Read the trial ↗
The research shows what is possible with its supervised program. Your response and the time it takes can differ. On a repeat DXA, your clinician looks for a change beyond the facility’s measurement variation, called its least significant change. Maintaining density may also be a useful goal; a stable scan alone cannot show what would have happened without your routine. Agree on scan timing and interpretation with your clinician. ISCD follow-up guidance ↗
1
Find your starting point
Describe your history, experience and equipment. The assessment suggests a track and app precautions; it does not assess fracture risk, choose a safe load or provide clinical clearance.
2
Practise and record
Learn the movement and equipment with appropriate support. Record the weights, repetitions and effort you actually complete. A missing entry is never treated as a successful set.
3
Review the challenge
Two distinct completed, comparable same-weight records, effort ratings and your response can inform a small load suggestion. An incomplete, painful, unusually difficult or reduced-set attempt does not establish readiness to increase.
4
Plan what comes next
Review how you recovered, current symptoms and any changes in your history before the next session. You can repeat a load, take an easier agreed day or pause for individual guidance.
What the record can tell you.
Sets, repetitions and effort: “3 sets × 8–10” means three rounds of eight to ten repetitions. RPE estimates how demanding the effort feels; it is not a technique assessment. Follow the effort guidance agreed with your clinician or instructor and avoid training to failure.
Comparable evidence: every progression tier requires two distinct completed sessions at the same weight, with full comparable working sets, repetition and effort targets, and manageable, pain-free responses with confidence. At least 48 hours must separate the end of the first workout and start of the second. The next session must also begin at least 48 hours after the end of your latest strength attempt, including partial work. A linked full-readiness check within the preceding two hours must confirm recovery without new symptoms or other concerns. Records without reliable timing cannot establish an automatic increase. These are app safeguards, not a validated clinical prescription; increase limits and back-off suggestions depend on the progression tier.
Reasons to hold: missing or mixed-load entries, technique-help requests, new pain, reduced set targets and lighter or recovery days prevent an immediate increase. Equipment increments can also be too large. Percentage-based or clinician-directed loads remain selected by your supervising clinician.
You confirm the next step: a previous weight is historical context. Review any suggestion against your present symptoms, technique, recovery and agreed care plan before using it. The app cannot directly observe bone strength or determine a safe working load.
Missed sessions, partial work and breaks
Do not squeeze missed sessions together to catch up. A partial record stays in history without advancing your planned sequence. The next slot follows completed planned work, rather than the number of records or the calendar date.
The template has twelve planned weeks; your chosen cadence and pauses can make the calendar block longer. After a break, illness, injury, new pain or a change in health, review how to restart with your clinician. A prior workout cannot clear you to resume.
Prepare your return-to-exercise questions →Before heavier lifting or impact
- Agree on starting movements, working loads and adaptations for fractures, balance and other health conditions.
- Practise setup and equipment handling with direct observation when needed. A video or camera estimate cannot confirm spinal alignment or readiness.
- Know when to stop, how much recovery to allow and which smaller load increments are available.
- Peak requires individual assessment and direct qualified supervision, including any lighter preparation selected by your clinician. The app does not provide a separate technique stage or automatic promotion. A clinician selects percentage-based loads and each increase.
The trial and your training plan
LIFTMOR offers a reason to build an appropriate strength routine. It studied selected postmenopausal women with low bone mass during eight months of closely supervised resistance and impact training. Bone Builder adapts research principles into its own training blocks.
| What to compare | LIFTMOR research | Bone Builder |
|---|---|---|
| Time and routine | Two supervised 30-minute sessions weekly for eight months. | Twelve planned weeks per block. Foundation and Build plan three sessions weekly; Peak plans two. Your chosen cadence and pauses can extend the block. |
| Movements and loading | Initial low-load technique practice, followed by deadlift, back squat, overhead press and impact training. | Foundation and Build organize movement practice, strength and balance. Peak alternates deadlift and squat focus days with clinician-directed loading; generated Peak sessions omit impact. These templates differ from the trial. |
| Support | Participants were screened and trained with direct qualified supervision. | Membership provides self-guided tools. Arrange individual assessment and direct qualified supervision separately for high-intensity lifting and high-impact training. |
At the end of a completed block, reassess your current health, experience and equipment to start the next sequence while keeping your training history. A fresh block does not automatically raise weights or move you into Peak. Around eight months and beyond, review consistency, strength and everyday function with your clinician, including when a repeat DXA would be useful.
Bone Fit is professional education for adapting exercise across clinic, community and home settings. It helps inform the app’s movement learning and adaptations; it is not a single workout with one expected percentage gain. About Bone Fit ↗
Bone Builder helps you put an appropriate routine into practice and keep useful records. Its current templates have not been shown to reproduce LIFTMOR’s bone-density results or reduce fractures. Your individual plan and support guide the next step.