The Senior Website

Test Your Balance…Still Good?

20th September, 2009 - Posted by cie - No Comments

Do you think your balance is as good as ever?  Can you step up on a 2 step stool that is out in the open (not near anything to put a hand on) with ease and confidence?  Or do you feel a bit hesitant?  Kinda unsure? Want something to put your hand against?

How long has it been since you tried walking right on the sidewalk line, or on the parking curb, or on the rail track?  I mean walked quickly, easily and without wobble?

Well, go, try it now. I’ll wait. Walk quickly when you do this.

Not as easy as it once was.

If you have no convenient curb or rail track, and I’m thinking many do not, try this little test to check your balance:

Stand near the back of a chair, but do not touch the chair, it is there for “if you need it”.  Put your hands on your hips and raise one foot up to the other knee.

How long can you stand there without wobble?  45 seconds, 30, under 30?

If you can do this easily for a full minute, your balance is good.  Anything less, and you could use the Better Balance Manual.

The Balance Manual will show you:

* How your balance works.

* Why balance tends to get worse as you age.

* How to safely do balancing exercises at home with no equipment.

* How to improve your leg strength with five simple exercises to help prevent falls.

* How to reduce your risk of falling at home.

And more…

To stay safe, and keep from falling, we need to be able to pull our bodies in a different direction, quickly, and remain upright. We fall because we cannot do this as we used to.

Can you jump? Have you tried it? Just stand still, then jump straight up. Or, put a small pillow on the floor and try to jump over it with both feet together.

These are the muscles and some of how they must move to keep us from falling. We lose this with lack of use. But it is not hard to recover, and it doesn’t require a sweaty workout to do so.

Mike Ross, is an exercise physiologist at a hospital-based health and fitness center. He has worked with seniors through personal training, classes, lectures, and consultations.

Mike has developed the Better Balance course and also offers a free Ecourse which will gives you lots of good information:

Part 1 – Why balance gets worse as you get older
Part 2 – The wrong way to deal with poor balance
Part 3 – How to do balance exercises (video)
Part 4 – The most important muscles for preventing falls (video)
Part 5 – Posture and balance (video)
Part 6 – How to reduce falls where they happen the most

Avoiding falls is so important. More than 30% of those over 60 will fall this year. Usually they are hurt to some degree, and often seriously.

Don’t let those statistics include you! Get The Balance Manual.