Evidence library · Joint pain

Does impact and jumping affect joint pain in menopause? What 6 studies found

Studies of impact and jumping in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women that measured joint pain. 2 reported an improvement and 4 found no difference against the comparison group.

  1. Postmenopausal women with low bone mass did weight-bearing exercise, aerobic dancing and flexibility work three times weekly for 12 months, and spinal bone density stabilized versus decline in controls, with improved fitness and wellbeing.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 124 women · 52 weeks · 1996PostmenopausalCited 104 timesPubMed

  2. Postmenopausal women with mild knee osteoarthritis who did 12 months of progressive high-impact training gained femoral neck bone mass and improved balance, strength and fitness, with no change in cartilage composition.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 76 women · 52 weeks · 2014PostmenopausalCited 55 timesPubMed

  3. Postmenopausal women with mild knee osteoarthritis did a 12-month supervised impact exercise program, which improved patellar cartilage quality, leg strength, and aerobic capacity versus controls.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 80 women · 52 weeks · 2015PostmenopausalCited 31 timesPubMed

  4. Postmenopausal women with mild knee osteoarthritis did 12 months of progressive high-impact exercise, which increased femoral neck bending strength without harming knee cartilage.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 80 women · 52 weeks · 2017PostmenopausalCited 27 timesPubMed

  5. A 6-month unilateral high-impact hopping program in postmenopausal women aged 55 to 70 increased femoral neck bone density with no adverse effects on knee osteoarthritis imaging markers.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 35 women · 26 weeks · 2020PostmenopausalCited 24 timesPubMed

  6. Early postmenopausal women who did high-resistance strength training and high-impact aerobics for 3 years maintained bone density at the spine and hip, unlike controls who lost bone.

    Reported an improvementControlled trial · 78 women · 156 weeks · 2006Early postmenopausalCited 85 timesPubMed

How to read this. Each line is one study, summarised in plain language from its PubMed abstract, with the authors' own sentence underneath on the study page. A count of studies is not a verdict: trials differ in size, length and quality, and a result in one group of women may not hold in another. Nothing here is medical advice.

Summaries are generated, then checked by machine against the abstract they came from; any summary that could not be matched word for word was left out. Our clinical lead is reviewing the summaries topic by topic, and this note will change when that is done. Corpus last refreshed 2026-11-03. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix the summary or remove the study.

Other exercise types and joint pain