I’ve never in my life been this excited about exercise. Honestly, I used to hate it.
REALLY hate it.
I’ve done it all — daily four-mile jogs, weight training at the gym, endless cardio machines, swimming. And every time, I’d think: this is supposed to be good for me, but why doesn’t it feel that way?
Instead of energy and vitality, I got soreness, aches, and a body that felt more broken than before. I blamed myself. Why can’t I stick with it? Why do I crash after two weeks?
What I didn’t know then is what I know so deeply now: I was stuck in perpetual recovery mode. My body was never actually repairing from the stress of daily life — and then I piled on forced exercise it wasn’t ready for.
Year after year, I’d try to “get back into a routine.” And year after year, I’d hit the wall again.
My body was running on empty — biologically tapped out. My connective tissue, my nervous system, my minerals, my recovery reservoirs — they were already in debt.
Only after consistent and deliberate recovery — rest, minerals, amino acids, nutrients, actual listening to my body — did something shift.
Now I wake up excited to exercise. I want to hop on my Peloton. I want to strap on my ruck and walk with weight. For the first time in my life, exercise feels like joy. Not punishment. Not self‑flagellation. Joy.
And one concept has completely changed the way I see all of this: the astronaut principle.
This principle fires me up about all the powerful, underrated tools in health. Everyone chases the flashy, complicated stuff. But it’s the simple, load‑based practices that actually work — like rucking, vibration plate sessions, and rebounding.
In space: osteoporosis in fast‑forward
In space, astronauts float. There’s no gravity. No weight pressing down on bones. No load = no signal to strengthen.
The result? Astronauts lose 1–2% of their bone density every single month. It’s osteoporosis in fast‑forward.
NASA has to force astronauts into daily resistance training — trying to fake gravity — just to slow the loss.
This extreme example shows us what bone health really depends on: load.
On earth: gravity is your trainer
Here on Earth, we have gravity. Even just walking with your own body weight puts load on your bones. But the magic happens when you add more: carrying, lifting, rucking.
Our ancestors did this constantly — food, water, tools, children. They didn’t outsource load. They embodied it.
When you put load on your skeleton, gravity itself becomes your trainer. Bones are living tissue. They adapt to stress by reinforcing themselves. They pull in minerals and proteins and become denser, stronger, more resilient.
Every time you walk with weight, you’re not just building muscle or burning fat — you’re literally vaccinating yourself against bone loss.
Isn’t bodyweight enough?
Walking with your own bodyweight is baseline load. It keeps bones from crumbling the way astronauts do in space. But it doesn’t strengthen them. To reinforce bone, you need progressive load beyond your baseline.
Your skeleton is an adaptive system — it only upgrades when the signal is bigger than yesterday’s. Bodyweight holds the line. Extra load builds the fortress.
Bone health isn’t just an “old age” problem
We talk about osteoporosis like it’s an 80‑year‑old’s disease. It’s not.
I’ve worked with people in their 30s and 40s with full‑blown osteoporosis. Bone loss can begin early, quietly, especially in a world where we outsource carrying to cars, machines, and convenience.
That’s why the astronaut principle is so powerful: it shows us that bones respond directly to how much you load them (and of course the raw materials to create dynamic bone tissue).
Remove load → rapid loss. Add load → reinforcement. Simple. Urgent.
If exercise has ever felt punishing or confusing, it wasn’t your fault. You were in perpetual recovery mode, like I was.
Restore recovery — nutrients, minerals, real rest — and then add the right kind of exercise. Your body responds with clarity and power.
Bone isn’t a retirement issue. It’s a lifelong one.
The older you get, the more movement and loading you need to keep density and strength.
The younger you are, the more movement and loading you need to bank resilience so you don’t hit your 40s already brittle.
Walk with weight. Carry things. Put load on your skeleton and make gravity your personal trainer.
Astronauts prove the principle: without load, bones crumble. With load, bones thrive. And if you want to thrive, you don’t wait. You start carrying now.
NOTE: Before carrying load or changing your movement routine, check in with yourself and with a qualified health professional. If you’ve had injuries in the past, have been sedentary, or need to re‑balance your basic functional movement patterns first, make sure your foundation is safe and ready — so when you do add load, your body adapts cleanly and without setback.
This piece originally appeared on Substack.
It is available for reprint or syndication.
To request rights or republish, contact helena@bianchivibranthealth.com.