What is an example of a weight-bearing exercise?

Weight-bearing exercises are those that cause your body to work against the force of gravity. These exercises help to build and maintain bone density by stimulating bone growth due to the stress placed on the bones during the activity. Walking is a prime example of this type of exercise, as it requires you to support your body weight and engage various muscles in your legs and core while moving against gravitational force.

While swimming and cycling are excellent forms of cardiovascular exercise that promote overall fitness, they are not considered weight-bearing activities because they do not require the body to support its full weight against gravity. Swimming, for example, involves buoyancy that reduces the impact on the joints, while cycling primarily builds strength in the legs but does not engage the upper body in a weight-bearing manner. Yoga can include weight-bearing elements depending on the poses, but it varies widely and is not consistently effective for this purpose. Therefore, walking remains the most straightforward and widely recognized example of a weight-bearing exercise.