Health and life stages · Osteoporosis and osteopenia
Low bone density needs the opposite of the usual advice.
Most apps make an exercise safer by making it smaller. For osteoporosis that is the wrong fix, and it is the one place VeraForma overrules its own rule.
The distinction most software misses
Arthritis and osteoporosis want opposite things.
VeraForma’s general rule, and Brad’s rule standing next to a client, is: less range, less load, less pressure through the joint. Shorten the movement and it gets kinder.
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For arthritis, that is exactly right.
The problem there is how far the joint travels, so a smaller movement means less irritation. The shortened version is the fix, not a watered-down version of it.
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For osteoporosis, it is the wrong mechanism.
The risk is not how far you travel. It is the compressive load that bending forward puts through the front of the vertebra — which is precisely where low-density bone is weakest, and where wedge fractures happen.
So a smaller forward bend is still a forward bend. Making it smaller does not address the thing that matters.
This is the one place the app overrules its own substitution. Everywhere else, offering a reduced-range version of an exercise is the careful answer. With osteoporosis ticked, that substitution is refused rather than offered smaller, because a smaller version of the wrong movement is still the wrong movement.
What it actually changes
Yes to load. No to bending and twisting under it.
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Weight-bearing work stays in — deliberately.
Being careful with low bone density does not mean doing less. Loading through your legs and spine upright is the point, and the programme keeps it rather than quietly replacing everything with seated work.
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Spinal flexion comes out.
Curl-ups, crunches, loaded forward bends — off the list, not offered in a smaller size.
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So does loaded rotation.
Twisting with weight through the spine comes out for the same reason.
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And balance gets its own attention.
The thing that turns low bone density into a broken bone is usually a fall. The balance and chair-stand work is part of the same programme, and the camera checks it.
Before anything else
Get the diagnosis from a doctor, not an app.
VeraForma is coaching, not medicine. It does not diagnose anything and it does not know your bone density — it knows what you told it. If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia, tick it, and log whatever your doctor or physiotherapist told you: the app follows their instruction everywhere, on a free account.
If you have not been assessed and you think you should be, that is a conversation with your doctor, and it is worth having before you start loading anything. If you are in or past menopause, that is the stage this matters most in, and the app treats it as its own answer.
All of it is free: the movement screen, the condition rules and the programme that comes out of them.
