There are a gazillion grow taller exercises circulating both on the internet and in books but do they all work ?
Well, the answer to this question depends on your age among other factors.
If you are a beginner or new to the grow taller topic, knowing which exercises are effective at what age should be your first priority to save your precious time why ?
prepubescent and early to mid teenage bones naturally grow faster and during adolescence spontaneous g..h release is rapid than at any other age.
So younger children and teenagers don’t need to exercise a lot for their bones to benefit from any form of physical activity.
How how do exercises help you to grow taller?
Before attempting to know which exercises will help you to grow taller, perhaps you need to know how exercises contribute to bone and body growth in general.
- Some anaerobic exercises simulate growth hormones release.
Some anaerobic exercises like sprinting and weight lifting trigger growth hormone (G.H) secretion. Growth hormone is the engine for growth.
GH catalyzes longitudinal bone growth by stimulating the multiplication and differentiation of prechondrocytes and osteoblasts (bone manufacturing cells) in the growth plate.
So, if you are still in puberty or below the age of 16 for girls and 18 for boys, and your growth plates are yet to be fused, G.H is extremely important to accelerate growth velocity.
And even when you are past puberty and your plates are closed, growth hormone still has a role to play including the regeneration and growth of cartilage, muscles and to some degree, bones.
2. Some exercises accelerate the bone remodeling process
Bones are not dead tissues within the human body; they are living structures that adapt to environmental needs in response to mechanical stress and they continue to change over the course of a lifespan.
This process of skeletal change is known as bone remodeling. Remodeling entails the resorption of old or damaged bone, followed by the deposition of new bone material.
Once formed, the bone grows and changes shape by modeling.
When you exercise regularly, your bone adapts by building more bone than wasting thus accelerating bonne growth.
3. Some stretching exercises increase muscle length.
Though in most cases the increase in muscle length as a result o stretching is transient, studies show that if muscles are stretched consistently for long period o time, they adapt to function in a stretched position until a new steady state length is reached a term known as the adaptive remodeling of muscle.
Hence, if the right stretches are executed properly, they can in one way or the other contribute to muscle and body growth.
Which exercises will help you to grow tall?
Age 8 to 17 years ( prepubescence to adolescence years)
Pre pubescent age is the age that precedes puberty stage.
Different individuals enter puberty at a different time. On overage, girls enter puberty between 8 and 12 years while boys enter puberty 2 years later between 10 and 14 years.
To achieve the maximum benefit of bone growth, Physical activity or participation in sport should start at prepubertal ages and should be maintained through the pubertal stage of development.
studies show that engaging in sports at an earlier age prior to the pubertal growth spurt greatly triggers skeletal bone and muscle growth among children in contrast to normal growth in non-physically active children.
Like earlier motioned, before children enter puberty, the sensitivity of their immature skeletal bones to physical activity is relatively high.
Just 3 hours of regular exercising is enough for a significant amount of bone to be formed.
Excessive exercise among children is associated with a negative impact on pubertal growth spurt reason partly being that energy costs of excessive exercise can reduce the nutrients available or necessary for growth.[1]
The common types of aerobic endurance exercises are running, walking, swimming, and cycling. These aerobic endurance exercises have been reported to have both negative and positive effects on improving BMD in adolescence. According to a study by Eliakim et al.[35] conducted in 38 male adolescents, aerobic- or endurance-type training such as running, aerobic dance, and basketball performed 2 hr a day 5 days a week for 5 weeks increased osteogenic markers including osteocalcin, bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, and osteopontin and decreased bone absorption marker including amino-terminal collagen cross-links. Additionally, in a study by Im [36], a 12-week track and field exercise program in female adolescents showed improvement in lumbar and femoral BMD. Furthermore, a study comparing BMD in different types of youth athletes (running, walking, cycling, triathlon, soccer) also showed statistically significant results in runners [1] and softball [37] and soccer [38] players. Hence, weight-bearing exercise programs as part of aerobic endurance exercises such as running or track and field are effective for improving BMD in adolescence.
However, when the correlation between running distance and lumbar BMD in endurance runners aged 18 to 44 years was analyzed, a significant negative correlation was found, [39] and these results support the findings of a study that there is a risk of fractures (BMD deterioration) associated with running more than 10 km per week regardless of age, suggesting that running distance must be controlled.[40] Furthermore, a study examining BMD in female high school students based on the type of sports found a lower BMD in long-distance runners than in taekwondo, judo, and weight-lifting athletes.[41] These results suggest that the choice of exercise type and the control of exercise intensity will play important roles in promoting BMD in adolescents participating in aerobic endurance exercises. Swimmers (aged 10–19 years) who participated in swimming, one of the aerobic endurance exercises, were found to have a lower BMD compared to the general control group.[42] Bellew and Gehrig [43] also compared the BMD among swimmers, weightlifters, and soccer players and found that the areal BMD in swimmers was significantly lower than that in soccer players, which was significantly lower in swimmers than in soccer players in a comparison conducted by the World Health Organization in adult females. As shown, non-weight-bearing sports such as swimming or cycling and excessive long-distance exercise are likely to have negative effects on BMD improvement.
Additionally, it was shown that female students undergoing a 9-month intervention with jumping exercises had higher lumbar BMD compared to the group who did not perform the exercise, and the increase in lumbar BMD was maintained in a follow-up test performed 20 months later.[67] Thus, the results of the previous studies suggest that plyometric or jumping exercise is an important form of exercise for improving adolescent BMD and that BMD increase in childhood or adolescence through plyometric exercise can prevent musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoporosis in adulthood.