"Be careful" is the advice that sets up the second fracture.

No and no. No monthly charge, no auto renewal, nothing to swallow, and no equipment I earn a cent on. Every purchase here is one payment for something you keep.

Yes, and the choice is not between exercise and rest. It is between the kind that loads the front of your spine and the kind that does not.

The three things that are genuinely dangerous for you are bending forward with weight in your hands, twisting with weight in your hands, and putting weight on top of your spine. Sit-ups, standing toe touches, and a loaded barbell across the shoulders. Those are out of this programme permanently and there is a page in the app explaining exactly why for each one.

What is left is a great deal. Lying face down and lifting your chest two inches. Standing up out of a chair. Sliding your arms up a wall. Standing on one foot at the sink. Holding a bag of shopping in one hand without leaning. None of those put a pound on top of your spine and all of them make you stronger.

The thing worth being clear about: this will not undo a bone that has already wedged. Nothing will. What it works on is the muscle that holds you upright, the shape you spend your day in, and how likely you are to go over. Those are the three parts that still respond, and the third one is the one that decides how the next ten years go.

If you have new pain, or pain that has changed, get that looked at before you start anything at all. That is not a formality and it is the one thing I will not budge on.

A dining chair, a wall, and a folded blanket for the floor. You already have all three.

The only thing you might not have is something to hold in one hand for the carry, and a shopping bag with tins in it does that job perfectly. Weigh it once on the bathroom scale and put the number in the app.

Around week nine some women add a pair of two-pound ankle weights, which cost about twelve dollars and are entirely optional. I do not sell them and there is no affiliate link anywhere on this site.

That is genuinely the whole list. This is different from the other programme on purpose. Loading a spine like yours needs a barbell and needs supervision, and since you are not getting either, we are not doing the thing that needs them.

They are for two different women and they share almost nothing except the app they run in.

The Threshold Protocol is for a woman whose scan came back thinning and whose spine is otherwise sound. It says her walking and swimming never put enough force through her bones to be worth building for. The answer there is to lift heavy. Deadlifts, squats, presses, twice a week, going up.

That programme turns some women away at the checkout. A broken bone in the spine. A score at -3.0 or below. Stenosis. A doctor who has already said no. It turns them away because loading a spine like that with nobody in the room is the thing that hurts them.

The Upright Protocol is what those women get instead. Nothing goes on top of your spine, ever. The work is on the muscles that hold you up, on your balance, and on the way you move through an ordinary day. Those are the parts that still respond when heavy lifting is off the table.

Not sure which one you are? The other checkout asks one question and tells you in about ten seconds, before you pay anything.

Partly, and I want to be precise about which part, because this is where most programmes make a promise they cannot keep.

A forward curve in the upper back is two things stacked on top of each other. One is the shape of the bones themselves, and if a bone has wedged, that part is permanent. No exercise reverses it and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something.

The other part is soft tissue. The muscles at the front of your chest get short, the ones across your upper back get weak and long, and between them they hold you further forward than your bones alone require. That part is not permanent, and on most women it is a bigger share of the total than they expect.

So what tends to happen over twelve weeks is that you stand somewhere between your current position and your bone position, which is often a visible difference and almost always a comfortable one. Several women have mentioned it was the neck ache going that they noticed first, rather than anything in a mirror.

What I will not do is put a number on it. It varies enormously and it depends on which of the two parts you have more of.

No, and I want to be careful about why the answer is no.

The other programme on this site has a floor under it. It asks whether you can get off the ground unaided, and if you cannot, it turns you away. This one has no such floor, because the women it turns away are the women who end up here.

Every movement in these twelve weeks has a seated version and a standing version. Week one of the chair path is you standing up out of a dining chair and sitting back down, four times, twice. That is the whole first movement. If that is hard, we start with a cushion on the seat to raise it, and the cushion comes out when it stops being needed.

Muscle responds to being asked for more at every age that has been studied, including in people in their nineties and including in people who start from a chair. Nothing switches off at seventy or at eighty. What changes is how fast it comes back and how little it takes to lose it again, which is an argument for starting today rather than an argument against starting.

"Too far gone" is usually a sentence about the scan. The scan is not the thing this programme works on. It works on the muscles that hold you upright and on how likely you are to go over, and both of those answer at any age.

If you can sit in a chair and stand up out of it with a hand on the arm, you can start this week.

Twenty to twenty five minutes, twice a week. That is it.

There is no long warm up, because nothing here gets heavy enough to need one. There is no standing around between sets waiting for your breath back. The sessions are short because they are built out of small movements done well, not big movements done carefully.

Two of the twelve weeks add a third short day. It runs about twelve minutes and it is balance work only, done at the kitchen sink while the kettle boils. It is optional and the app will tell you so.

If twenty minutes is more than you have on a given day, do the first two movements and log it. A short session logged beats a full session skipped, and the app will not scold you for either.

Yes. You pick the chair path at signup and the whole twelve weeks runs without the floor.

Every session has two versions written out in full. Not a note saying "or do this seated" at the bottom. Two versions, with their own numbers and their own cues, and you never see the one you did not pick.

The chest lift is the one people ask about, because lying face down is where it usually lives. The chair version does the same job standing at a wall, sliding your forearms up the wall and holding. Same muscles down the back of you, no floor involved.

Here is the part worth knowing. Getting down and up off the floor is not a requirement of this programme. It is one of its outcomes. There is a module in week seven that teaches it as a sequence, in the order your body should learn it, with a chair beside you the whole time. Plenty of women who chose the chair path in week one are doing that module by week nine.

You are allowed to switch paths at any point, in either direction, and nothing you have logged is lost when you do.

That fear is not irrational and I am not going to talk you out of it. I am going to tell you what the programme does about it.

Three things break a spine like yours, and all three are out of this programme permanently. Bending forward with weight in your hands. Twisting with weight in your hands. Putting weight on top of your spine. No sit ups, no toe touches, no bar across the shoulders, not in week one and not in week fifty two. There is a page in the app on each one, explaining what it does to the front edge of the bone and why the answer never changes.

What is left does not put a single pound on top of your spine. Lying or standing and lifting your chest. Standing up out of a chair. Sliding your arms up a wall. Standing on one foot. Carrying a bag in one hand without leaning towards it.

Muscle soreness is normal and it is dull, it is spread over an area, and it is worse the day after tomorrow than tomorrow. Sharp pain is not normal. Pain down a leg is not normal. Pain that is worse the next morning than it was during the session means the last session was too much, and the app has a button for that which moves you back a step without you having to work out how.

And the honest part. Being careful has a cost too, and nobody puts it in a leaflet. Muscle that is not asked for anything gets weaker, and weaker muscle is what turns a stumble into a fall. Doing nothing is not the safe option. It is just the option where the damage is slow enough to blame on age.

The sheet was not wrong. It was unfinished, and it was unfinished for a reason that has nothing to do with the person who wrote it.

You got six visits, or eight, because that is what was approved. The exercises on that sheet were chosen to be safe for you to do alone at the level you were at in week one. Then the visits ran out, and the sheet did not change, and you kept doing week one for eleven months. Ten repetitions of the same thing, at the same difficulty, for a year.

Muscle only gets stronger when it is asked for more than it did last time. A movement repeated at the same difficulty stops producing change once the body has adapted to it, which usually takes a few weeks. That is the whole difference. Your sheet has no next week on it.

This has twenty four sessions in order, and each one is measurably harder than the one before it in a way you can see. Not heavier, because nothing gets heavy. Longer holds. Fewer hands on the chair. A slower way down. A narrower base under your feet. The app tells you what changed and why it changed it, in a sentence, every session.

Bring the sheet if you like. Most of what is on it is in here somewhere, sitting in week two.

It is more for you, not less. Falling is the thing this programme is aimed at, and a fall you have already had is the strongest reason in the world to start.

Every balance movement in here is done holding something. Week one is both hands on the back of a chair. Week four is one hand. Week eight is one fingertip. Week eleven is the fingertip hovering half an inch off the wood, which is not the same as no hand, and the difference matters because you can put it back down in a tenth of a second.

Nothing in this programme ever asks you to let go and hope.

The stick stays. Nobody here is going to tell you to give it up, and if anyone does it should be the person who prescribed it, standing in front of you. What tends to happen is that women use it in fewer places, and they notice that rather than being told it.

There is one thing to sort out before session one. If your fall was recent, or if you fell without knowing why, that gets looked at first. A fall out of nowhere can be blood pressure, or medication, or your inner ear, and none of those are things a training programme can fix. Get that answered, then come back.

Those three are exactly why this exists. They are on the list that stops the other programme, and that list is what sent most people to this page.

Stenosis. The narrowing is usually worse when you arch backwards and easier when you round slightly forwards. So the chest lift in here has a range you set, and the instruction is to stop at the point where anything starts travelling down a leg, and to treat that point as your ceiling for the week rather than as a failure. Walking-tolerance work is done holding a counter, not on a treadmill you cannot lean on.

Spondylolisthesis. One bone in your spine has slid forward on the one below it. The thing that provokes it is arching hard under load, and there is no load in here to arch under. What helps is the deep abdominal and hip work that stops the segment moving around, and that is in weeks one through four before anything else starts.

A fusion. The fused levels do not move, which means the levels above and below do more than their share. Everything here is about what the rest of you is doing so those neighbours are not carrying it alone. If your surgery was in the last three months, wait, and the checkout will stop you.

None of this replaces the person who diagnosed you. Take the Doctor Briefing to them. It states in two pages what this programme does and does not do, and it turns "should I be exercising?" into a question they can actually answer.

No. Do not stop anything, and do not delay anything, on account of this programme.

I have no view on your medication and I am not qualified to have one. That conversation belongs to you and the person who prescribed it, and nothing on this website is a reason to reopen it.

What is worth understanding is that the two do different jobs. Your medication works on the bone. This works on the muscle that holds you up and on whether you go over in the first place. A drug cannot make you catch yourself on the stairs, and standing on one foot at the sink does not change what a scan says. You are allowed both, and most women here have both.

One practical note. If you are on a drug that is given as an injection on a schedule, do not let it lapse without talking to your prescriber. Some bone medications have a rebound effect when they are stopped abruptly, which is a specific medical issue and not something a training programme can manage. That is a real thing, it is theirs to handle, and I mention it only so nobody reads a page about exercise and quietly decides they are done with the pharmacy.

Sooner than the other programme, and for a different reason.

Strength takes weeks. Balance and coordination move faster than that, because a lot of what makes you unsteady is not weakness at all. It is your body having stopped practising. Practice comes back quickly.

Weeks one and two feel like nothing is happening. Everything is deliberately too easy and you will suspect you have been sold something trivial. That is the ramp, it is on purpose, and it is the part most women want to skip.

Somewhere in weeks three and four is when it usually lands, and it is almost never dramatic. Standing up out of a chair without a hand on the arm, and noticing an hour later that you did. Reaching into the top cupboard without rehearsing it first. Turning round in the kitchen without the small pause.

By week eight the balance number is the one that has moved most. Standing on one foot at the sink for as long as the kettle takes is a normal week eight.

And what will not happen: nothing you feel in twelve weeks is bone. This does not change what your next scan says and I am not going to suggest otherwise. What it changes is what you can do between now and then, and how likely you are to be on the floor at some point in the next ten years.

Do Phase 1. Eight sessions over four weeks. If you do not feel measurably steadier at the end of it, tell me and I will refund every cent, and you keep everything.

I tied it to finishing Phase 1 rather than to a date on the calendar, and the reason is not cleverness. Thirty days with nothing attached rewards the woman who buys, does nothing, and asks for her money back on day twenty nine. Eight sessions is four weeks, it is about three hours in total, and it is the smallest amount of work that makes the question answerable at all.

Phase 1 also ends with numbers. How long you held the chest lift. How long on one foot. How many chair stands in thirty seconds. You are not deciding on a feeling, you are looking at week one next to week four.

If the question before payment routes you out, you do not have to ask anybody for anything and there is nothing to refund, because I would rather not take the money.

And if you are three sessions in and you already know this is not for you, write to me. I am not going to argue you into a programme you are not doing.

seventeen dollars, once, for the following.

• Twenty four sessions across twelve weeks, written out one at a time. Two a week. Not a template you fill in yourself.
• Both paths written in full: the floor path and the chair path. You pick one at signup, you can change it whenever you like, and you never see the one you did not pick.
• The getting up off the floor module in week seven, taught as a fixed sequence next to a chair. Almost nobody teaches this and it is the single most useful thing in here.
• The app. Every session opens with today's numbers already filled in and a plain sentence saying why they changed. Logging is one tap. At the end it shows you today against week one, because no scan is going to show you what four weeks did and you deserve to see something.
• The four numbers. A written assessment at the start and at the end: chest lift hold, one foot hold, chair stands in thirty seconds, and how far you can reach without moving your feet. Printed, so next year is a comparison rather than a memory.
• Never Do These, which is the three movements that break a spine like yours, with the reason for each one.
• The Doctor Briefing, two printable pages with the citations on them, written to be handed across a desk rather than read by you.

At checkout there is one unchecked box for The Everyday Spine at eleven dollars. That is the thirty movements of an ordinary day taken apart one at a time: how to pick something up off the floor, how to get out of a car, how to make a bed, how to carry shopping, how to cough. It is optional and the programme is complete without it.

For scale. One session with a physical therapist runs $150 to $250, and you would need a dozen to cover this ground. The scan that gave you the news cost more than this does.

You keep everything, and the honest answer is that you keep doing it.

This is not a course you finish. Muscle and balance are held by use. Stop asking for them and they go back, and they go back faster after sixty than they did before it. That is not a sales line, it is the reason the twelve weeks end with a maintenance week written out rather than with a certificate.

Week twelve gives you two things. Your four numbers, written down, so a year from now you are comparing rather than guessing. And a two-session week you can repeat indefinitely, which is the smallest amount that holds what you built.

Plenty of women just run the twelve weeks again from the start at the level they finished on, and that works.

There is a longer continuation if you want it, and you will be offered it once. It is not required, nothing renews, and if you never buy another thing from me the programme you have does not expire, does not lock, and does not start nagging you.

Show her the Doctor Briefing. It is free, it is two pages, and you do not have to buy anything to get it.

"Be careful" is usually the correct answer to a question nobody had time to ask properly. In a ten minute appointment, "should I exercise?" from a woman with a spinal fracture sounds like "should I go to a gym and lift weights?", and the safe answer to that question is no. She is not being lazy. She is answering what she heard.

The briefing changes what she is answering. It states in plain terms that there is no axial loading anywhere in the programme, that bending forward and twisting under load are excluded permanently, that the work is extensor endurance, hip strength, and balance, and it lists the conditions that stop it. There is a line at the bottom for her to sign if she wants to.

Given that, the answer often changes, because it is a different question.

If it does not change, that is her call and it stands. She has seen your images and I have not. Ask her what specifically she wants avoided, because "be careful" is not a plan and you are allowed to ask for one.

One thing that is not up for discussion: if you have new pain, or pain that has changed, or you fell without knowing why, that comes first and this comes second.

No, and the programme is built on the assumption that you are alone, because most women reading this are.

That assumption shapes what is in it. Nothing here requires a spotter, because nothing here is heavy enough to need catching. Every balance movement is done next to something solid you are already holding, and the progression is how much of your weight is in that hand, never whether the hand is there at all. Nothing asks you to hold a position you cannot get out of on your own.

The floor module in week seven is the one place a first go with somebody nearby is worth having if that is available to you. Not because it is dangerous, but because the first time down is easier when you are not also managing the thought of getting back up. If nobody is available, it is done next to a chair, in a fixed order, and the app walks you through it a step at a time.

Two practical things, and then I will stop. Have your phone in the room, not in the hall. And if you live alone, tell one person which two mornings you train. That is not about this programme. That is just sensible, and you probably already do it.

Ask the person treating you, and do what they say. I am not going to put a number on this page that somebody uses instead of an answer from someone who has seen their images.

What I can tell you is what the question actually is, so you can ask it properly.

A broken bone in the spine that is settling is a different situation from one that is still painful and still changing. The thing your clinician is watching for is whether the bone is stable. Until it is, even gentle work waits, and the honest reason is that nobody can tell from here.

So the question to ask is not "can I exercise yet?" It is: "Is my fracture stable, and when it is, is extensor endurance and balance work without any axial load appropriate for me?" That is a question with a real answer. The Doctor Briefing is written to be handed over at exactly that appointment, and it is free.

In the meantime, do not lie still for weeks waiting for permission. Long stretches of bed rest after a break like this cause muscle and bone loss of their own. Walking as tolerated is usually part of what you have already been told to do. Do that part.

And the checkout will stop you if you have had surgery in the last three months, or if there is pain nobody has looked at yet. That is not a permanent no. It is a wrong-order problem, and this will be here at the same price when the order is right.