23 Balance Exercises for Seniors (with Videos)

00:00:00 this next exercise is a seated toe tap so all you're going to do is sit nice and tall with your feet on the floor and instead of having your feet out in front of you you want your ankles right underneath your knees if you can all you're going to try to do is pick up one toe and then switch to your other toe you're going to alternate back and forth and then what you can do if it's too hard you'll move your foot out a little bit in front of you and then you can flex your foot because you'll have more range 00:00:30 of motion and if that's still too hard you're going to sit with your feet further in front of you same thing you can flex your foot and you're alternating tapping your toes and the goal is to pull your toes up towards your knee as far as you possibly can so that we can work on the muscles in the front of your shin to help you get back to doing what you love

00:00:00 [Music] hey guys Emily hulls burger here from the Institute of sports and spines today I'm going to be running you through an exercise called seated March this is a great exercise it's working your core without having to get down onto the floor so we're starting sitting up in a chair nice and tall I've got my core drawn in drawing my belly button to my spine pulling up through my pelvic floor slightly from here I'm lifting one leg off the floor just a little and then placing it back down and doing the same00:00:34 on the other side so we're trying to avoid moving our torso with this exercise so I'm staying up nice and strong nice and tall lifting up slowly down and then the other side wonderful that's seated March

00:00:05 For seated knee extension, just bring one foot up and squeeze that quad muscle as tight as you can, then slowly come back down.

00:00:00 sit down and move your ankles around in circles both anticlockwise and clockwise this is a great Mobility exercise to the ankle and very useful for ankle stiffness following a sprain

00:00:00 sit down with good posture draw your belly button inwards towards the back of the chair slightly and tilt the pelvis backwards I.E flatten the spine against the chair return to the start position arching your back known as Lumar L dois this exercise strengthens the Deep abdominal muscles and improves core control

00:00:01 this is a great balanced exercise to help prevent falling this is a very difficult exercise so make sure that you do it in a safe environment with support around you to perform this exercise you're going to stand on your one leg you're going to do this for 30 to 60 seconds trying to maintain a good upright posture as you do this if this becomes too easy close your eyes and it will progress it will make the exercise harder again trying to work up to 30 to 60 seconds make sure that you do this exercise on both00:00:38 sides again when you do this exercise you're trying to uh make sure that your posture is upright and steady and if it becomes too easy close your eyes and it'll make it more difficult

00:00:01 this is a great balance exercise to help work on preventing Falls this is going to be a staggered stance balance so you're going to have one foot in front of the other I'm trying to take your heel to toe and in this position trying to be upright and maintain balance for 30 to 60 seconds you also want to make sure that you perform this exercise on both sides meaning your right foot's in forward and your left foot is in forward if this becomes too easy closing your eyes will make it more difficult and again trying to perform it00:00:38 for 30 to 60 Seconds

00:00:01 Heel To Toe walking to improve your balance [Music] many seniors have trouble with their walking they might Shuffle they're not lifting their feet high enough or they're walking with their feet too wide apart one exercise that can really help this is Heel To Toe walking where you walk with your heel of one foot touching the toe of the other kind of like you're walking on a tightrope the reason that Heel To Toe walking helps is because it improves weight shift a lot of the reason that seniors have trouble with their walking and tend00:00:40 to shuffle is because they're afraid of shifting their weight over the leg that they're standing on so when you walk Heel To Toe it actually forces you to shift your weight a lot more and it's a great way to practice this and improve it so the way you do heal the toe walking to be safe is you want to use a countertop you can use your kitchen countertop or any countertop in your house even the back of a couch will work you stand up with one hand on the countertop and you walk Heel To Toe just two or three steps then00:01:15 turn around and walk two to three steps back you never want to get away from the countertop as you get better you can start to lift your hand off the countertop so you're not holding on when you're doing it but your hand is there just in case a lot of people are going to have trouble with this exercise I recommend that you do it two to three times a day every single day for a few weeks once you've done that you're gonna see an improvement as you get really good at this exercise another thing you can try00:01:49 to do is walk two to three steps forward and then walk two to three steps backwards doing exactly the same thing this is an excellent way to improve your ability to shift your weight people that Master this can definitely stop shuffling and see an improvement not only in their walking but a reduction in their falling I hope this video is helpful if you like this video please subscribe to my channel to see more videos like this [Music]

00:00:04 hi there and welcome to this get exercise competent video today I'm with Riven and we're going to show you how to do the step up which is a great exercise for your lower limbs in particular your quads your hamstrings your glutes and also it's going to really engage your core so to SK with Riven just going to show you how the exercise is then we're going to break it down into its three key segments and then we're going to talk about some of the core mistakes people often make doing the step up so00:00:26 start off Riven excellent so first we're going to talk about the starting position so to begin with he's standing about hit width apart with his toes pointing forwards when we look sideways on we'll see that there's a couple of inches between the step and the front of his feet so then he's going to lift one of his feet and put it onto the step he makes sure that the whole foot is on the step so the heel is not hanging off so the whole foot's there that's very important then from front on what we'll see is his00:01:03 hip knee and Ankle are all aligned so they in a straight line like this that's really good so that's the start position then for going up he's going to use his front leg to drive him to go up while keeping his body in an upright position excellent so what we see here is his body is still really good posture and one more time brilliant once up he's then going to put the foot that's just come up down and then lower himself in a controlled way with really good posture excellent that's really good so now00:01:35 we're going to talk about some of the common mistakes you often see with a step up so the first one if you put your foot on is losing this alignment so you lose the hip knee ankle alignment so the knee comes in and that can be at any point of the exercise and we want to avoid this because it's going to put excess stress on the inside of the knee and also it won't engage the glute properly so you want to make sure that this is a nice straight line so that's the first mistake we often see the second one is as people push up they use00:02:02 their back leg rather than the front leg great whereas what we want to see is all the work coming from the front leg so now one correctly brilliant so the back leg is not doing anything it's all from the front leg now the other common mistake we often see best seen again side on is that people Rock forwards to help them get up rather than using their legs so here riven's going to show it incorrectly great whereas what we want is the body to stay upright as he goes up up excellent so that's the step up a00:02:35 really good exercise for your lower body once you master that you can add some weight so you can either hold some dumbbells or put a barbell on your back but the key is quality of movement hope you enjoyed this get exercise confident video

00:00:06 For squats with a chair, use the chair as a target. Step just a little bit away from the chair because you're gonna stick your bottom back and bring your chest forward so your knees don't go in front of your toes. So squat back, just touch the chair and come back up.

00:00:01 hi it's Susie with another quick exercise tip now this month is April fools so we're trying to increase awareness about Falls risk and give you some balance exercises that you can work on to improve your balance and reduce that falls risk so today's exercise we're going to be talking about reaches in different positions because a lot of Falls do happen at home and on a single level surface so not necessarily while people are walking up or downstairs sometimes where they're reaching for something and they over balance so I'm00:00:33 going to show you a few different progressions a few different variations so let's start with the basic one but before we get started just remember always to have good balance support nearby make sure you've got a I've got a chair next to me a wall behind just so that you've got something to hold on to if you do lose your balance now first things first the easiest variation of this exercise I'm going to keep our feet close to each other and so side by side and we're going to start by reaching to the side00:01:03 reaching in front and reaching to the opposite side okay and we're going to do the same with the other arm so we're going to reach to the side reach in front and then reach to the other side and we're trying to reach as far as we can but staying in control and in that balance base of support now we can progress that a little bit more by moving into either a heel to toe position or if you do find that this is too big a step you can go into what we would call a semi-tander position with a feeder side by side rather than stacked00:01:37 one in front of the other so either way we're doing this similar thing so we're going to reach forward we're going to reach to one side and we're going to reach to the other side and you'll notice with this one I used both hands together it's fine to use one hand at a time I like to use both hands when we start to get more advanced with our balance because it will shift our trunk position a little bit more make sure if you are doing a heel to toe position that you're swapping so that the other foot is in front and repeating00:02:09 the same positions as we're testing our balance and trying to pay attention to the ones that you find a little bit more challenging and it's a good idea to add a couple of extra repetitions in these positions for that now the final stage to make this exercise even more challenging is to do the same thing standing on the one leg so for here we're going to be Reaching Forward and it's a good idea to bring the leg back to give yourself a little bit of a counter balance so we're Reaching Forward we're coming to the one side and00:02:42 then we're coming to the other side as well okay and making sure like with the tandem or Heel To Toe stand that you're challenging yourself on both the right and the left legs now for each of those if the three different directions of reaches is equal to one repetition you want to try and do five reaches so you should be reaching 15 times but just in three different directions or positions so I hope you've enjoyed today's tip stay safe stay active and I'll see you soon for another quick exercise tip

00:00:00 sidestepping over an obstacle to improve your balance [Music] many people have trouble with their balance they might be shuffling they might be using a cane or Walker just to get around they might even be stumbling or falling my name is Doug I'm a physical therapist with 30 years of experience and I specialize in proprioceptive Rehabilitation for people that are at risk of falling in this video I'm going to show you a great exercise that I use every day to help people improve their balance and resist fall one of the main00:00:39 reasons that people fall is that they lack proprioception as we get older we stop doing things that challenge our balance and one of the effects of this is we lose the ability to know where our arms and legs are in space proprioception is the awareness of where your arms and legs are without you looking at your arms and legs you develop your proprioception by doing things that challenge your balance because when you're challenging your balance you're improving your knowledge of where your arms and legs are and the00:01:10 more you practice balance challenging things the better your proprioception can get one of the best exercises that you can do to improve this is called sidestepping over an obstacle now in normal side stepping you're just stepping sideways you're not stepping over anything but one way to make this more challenging is to have an obstacle now in my video I'm using a foam roll but you can use anything you can use a rolled up dish towel you can use a piece of tape anything at all will be a good obstacle you just want something that00:01:46 forces you to step over it now if you feel like you're at a higher level you can pick something larger you can even use an aerobic step or something like an exercise ball but for most of us you want to use something small my foam roller is only about three inches tall and about four inches wide now to do this exercise safely you want something sturdy next to you you can use a countertop you can use a sink a back of a chair anything that's not going to move that you can hold on to now when you first do the exercise you want to00:02:23 grab on to that that sturdy thing and basically what you're doing is stepping sideways over the obstacle making room for both feet so you step with both feet to one side and then you step back with both feet and you want to do this one foot at a time but you want to leave room for the other foot if you bring your foot too close to the obstacle then your other foot might end up on top or cross you want to always avoid crossing your legs when you do this and for that reason if you find that you're crossing your legs you might want00:02:56 to pick an obstacle that's a little bit narrower if it's too wide that might be too much for you to step over in the beginning now to do this exercise effectively you want to do it for about five minutes two or three times a day the goal with this exercise is to do it without holding anything 20 times in both directions but for many people that I've worked with that takes weeks if not months I see clients usually one or two times a week and I've noticed that it takes often a month or two before they00:03:32 can do this exercise without holding on it really depends on the level of your balance when you start it what's what's true for one person really isn't going to be true for someone else because everyone has a different ability level but this exercise is very effective at improving your proprioception your balance and your strength people that can do this feel more stable I hope this video was helpful if you want to see more videos like this please subscribe to my channel thank you [Music]

00:00:11 grapevines also known as crossover steps are a great way to support your walking balance control and at the same time it also teaches us how to recover from a fall to the side so for example if i trip over this way i know how to cross my foot over and catch myself so when we do this exercise we start off heading sideways by crossing one foot in front of the other then maybe the next time we start by crossing the next leg behind and then you can start to alternate them where you'll start by crossing in front00:00:40 then in behind going again and again for this exercise you want to spend about two to three minutes working on it making sure that you're going to the left and to the right to improve that walking balance control

00:00:01 hi my name is Keegan Marshall and I'm a certified personal trainer and corrective exercise specialist at Pure Body Balance Health and Fitness today we're going to go over the single leg balance reach this is a great exercise for improving balance so here's some techniques on how to properly perform this exercise make sure you're keeping your back straight your head pointed towards the ceiling you want to make sure you're keeping a neutral spine which means the natural curvature of your spine point00:00:33 your leg out front to the side and then behind ensuring that your hips stay level the entire time thank you for watching our video and you can find more tips at purebody balance.com

00:00:01 [Music] this is tree pose you can start this pose by focusing your weight onto your right foot lift your left leg and your knee place the sole of your left foot on your right inner thigh go as high as you can point your left toes downward straighten your arms and raise both of them overhead relax your shoulders and breathe inhale and exhale for a few seconds repeat this pose using your right leg

00:00:00 stand upright with good posture hold onto a wall or table for support place one foot in front of the other with the heel of one foot against the toes of the opposite foot stand here and maintain a good balance try to look straight ahead of you and not down at your feet this is a useful coordination and balance exercise you

00:00:00 [Music] this exercise is called weight shifts weight shifts are important for older adults to perform as an exercise because it helps them to maintain their center of gravity or about their belly button area above their base of support meaning their feet while they're walking for this exercise Betty I'm going to demonstrate for you first and then I'll actually have you perform it I'm going to be having you stand with your feet hip width the heart toes pointing forward going to have your hands on a on00:00:35 the chair in front of you for balance okay I want you to think about dipping into your knees keeping a soft Bend and then slowly shifting your weight to the right feeling the pressure over your right leg shoulders are moving in unison with the hips holding this for two seconds and then slowly Shifting the weight bringing it over the left leg holding it for 2 seconds okay you want to imagine that your hips are sliding a long tray from side to side as you're doing these okay good so go ahead and bring your feet hip width00:01:10 apart toes pointing forward want you to think about sitting into your knees just a little bit soft B good then go ahead and bring your weight slowly over your right leg hold it for two seconds one 2 slowly over the left one two shifting through the hips to the right one two and through the hips to the left one two good let's do one more time on either side hold it there one 2 and then to the left one two good nice job go ahead and relax now for progression purposes it is recommended that you go ahead and do five00:01:56 repetitions on each side for a total of 10 sh s building up to 15 repetitions on each side now if you are a caregiver it is important that you stand in a close supervisory role to your older adult preferably with your feet at least hip width apart with a soft Bend in the knees to ensure that you're ready should your senior lose their balance [Music]

00:00:00 sexercise is designed to strengthen and mobilize your hips begin by standing upright with something sturdy to hold on to you at your side such as the backrest of a chair now carefully bend one knee up towards your chest as high as is comfortably possible with your supporting leg straight and maintaining your posture once achieved repeat the exercise on the other leg the movement should be smooth and controlled and you should continue to breathe normally throughout to finish carefully return to your starting position

00:00:05 For the Romberg stance with your eyes closed, make sure you have a chair or something sturdy next to you just in case you need it for balance. Bring your feet as close together as you can, and then close your eyes.

00:00:00 sit on a Swiss ball with good upright posture make sure your head is not dropping forwards keep your eyes on the horizon line and maintain a gentle backward curve in your lower back do not be surprised if you get a little achy sitting for longer than 50 minutes sitting on a Swiss ball is great for posture and core control

00:00:01 The next exercise involves performing push-ups against a wall to strengthen your shoulder, elbow, and chest muscles. Stand with your feet away from the wall and your hands at shoulder height against the wall. Push through the hands to straighten the elbows and then bend the elbows. Try to stay on your toes with the body perfectly still with no movement in the shoulder blades. The only moving parts are the elbows. Common mistakes for this exercise involve dropping your chest and hips towards the wall and moving the shoulder blades00:00:37 together. In this clip you can see that the body is not maintaining the straight neutral alignment. Another mistake is letting your pelvis move backward and your shoulders coming together or coming apart too much. Avoid excessive shoulder blade motion throughout this exercise.