Exercise, in general, is one of the best things you can do for your health: It strengthens your heart and lungs, boosts mood and cognition, and lowers your risk of a bunch of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and some cancers.
And while most any form of movement is beneficial, there’s one underrated type that doesn’t involve busting your ass on a stationary bike, holding complicated yoga poses, or heaving dumbbells around. You probably did it a bunch as a kid, though maybe it’s been a few years (or decades) since it’s been a staple in your routine. And that’s a shame because it can really do a lot to improve your overall health—and longevity. We’re talking about jumping.
Jumping exercises—which are pretty much exactly what they sound like: moves that involve jumping, hopping, skipping, leaping, or bounding—aren’t just for kids. They offer key bone health benefits for adults that you won’t get from other forms of exercise. And they can do a lot to bolster your balance, agility, and reaction time as you age. Best part is, you don’t have to do tons of jumping to access these gains.
“You can see benefit from doing 30 jumps a few days a week,” Jocelyn Wittstein, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, and an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke University Medical Center, tells SELF.
We tapped Dr. Wittstein and three other experts to learn why jumping can be so helpful if you want to live a long life, the best way to maximize the benefits of jump exercises, and important safety caveats before giving them a whirl. We also rounded up five awesome jump exercises you can try at home. Let’s hop to it!
Jumping is good for longevity—in more ways than one.
The biggest benefit of jumping boils down to bone health. “Jumping is a type of exercise that creates impact on our lower extremities,” Dr. Wittstein says. And when your bones experience impact, a process called mechanotransduction takes place, which sends messages throughout your cells to stimulate bone formation, she explains. In other words, your bones grow stronger.
That’s important since starting at around age 30, we naturally lose bone density year after year, Natasha Desai, MD, the codirector of the Center for Women’s Sports Medicine at NYU Langone Orthopedics, tells SELF. For women, this decline accelerates around the age of 45 to 50 and continues into menopause, Dr. Wittstein says. Bone density loss can lead to osteopenia (low bone density) or osteoporosis (weak, brittle bones), both of which increase your risk of breaking bones.