Can exercise prevent arthritis?

The best time to protect your joints is before they start to fail.

Joint health should be built over a lifetime — and long before it is tested in later life.

A recent feature in The Guardian newspaper shows growing interest in what we can all start doing immediately to keep our joints healthy for life.

Arthritis can slowly turn everyday movements — walking upstairs, getting out of a chair or opening a jar — into painful, frustrating challenges. Once it takes hold, it tends to get worse. Treatments can relieve symptoms, and joint replacement can be transformative, but can it be avoided in the first place?

That’s the question asked in a recent feature in The Guardian newspaper: Small doses of exercise are a miracle cure. The piece, by Sarah Phillips, included conversations with Professor Alister Hart. Alongside advice from leading orthopaedic surgeons and rheumatologists, the article explores the practical steps we can all take to protect our joints — from strength training and running to diet, pain, footwear, surgery and recovery.

From avoiding damage to building strength

For many years, public concern around joints has focused on what to avoid. Running, impact and repetition have often been treated as risks. The questions people are now asking are more useful. What exercise protects my joints? How strong do my muscles need to be? Can walking, running or resistance training reduce my risk of arthritis? Could these habits help me avoid a hip or knee replacement later in life?

We welcome this shift. Our findings show consistently that healthy joints depend on healthy muscles, which depend on the right exercise. Joint health should be seen as a lifelong project. Like saving for retirement, investing in your joints through exercise is best started sooner rather than later, long before problems arise. The choices we make in midlife may influence how well we move decades later.

The exercises that protect joints

In the article Alister recommends glute bridges as an exercise almost anyone can do, including people recovering from fractures, hip replacements and back surgery. The piece also highlights squats, walking, swimming, stretching and strength training as practical ways to support joint health.

Strength training is especially important. Muscles protect joints as well as moving them. The stronger the muscles around a joint, the better they can share load, improve stability and keep people moving confidently.

Small doses, long-term gains

The article reflects a wider public health message: exercise doesn’t need to be extreme to be effective. Walking, Parkrun, swimming, climbing stairs, sit-to-stand exercises and short stretching routines all have a place.

The same thinking underpins new initiatives such as Movement 26.2, the NHS-backed campaign led by Sir Brendan Foster, which encourages people to build the habit of walking for around 20 minutes a day — the equivalent of a marathon each month. The message is simple: joint health is built through regular movement over many years, not occasional heroic efforts.

Building the evidence

Our research continues to explore not only whether activities such as running are safe, but how movement can help prevent osteoarthritis in the first place. Recent Exercise for Science studies are using MRI and AI to measure muscle health in new ways. Better measurement will help us understand how muscles protect joints, how activity changes the body, and how people can stay mobile for longer.

Read Professor Hart’s advice on exercise for healthier joints in The Guardian.