3 Walking Stick Mistakes to AVOID! (for Seniors)

if you're a senior who uses a walking stick then you need to be aware of three big mistakes that people make when they're using one of these so you can fix it and get more out of your stick as a result if you don't know who I am my name is Will Harlow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio in Farnam and today I'm going to be showing you three mistakes people make with a walking stick so you can fix your walking at home by correcting those mistakes so there's three big mistakes I see people make with walking sticks and the first one is to do with how long the walking stick is so I've got this walking stick out of the packet to show you now and I see many people coming in using their walking stick with it like this now if you watch me walk with this walking stick can you see a problem when I use it now many people would say no that actually looks normal but when I see people with a stick like this the first thing I can spot is that it's too high now if you look at the way I'm using my hands when I walk with this walking stick look at my arm okay my arm here is bent I've got a bent elbow so when I push down on the walking stick my my power has to come from my tricep muscle okay which is quite a small muscle in comparison to the rest of my body so I have to push down using this muscle here to keep my arms stable as I walk now even though this looks like it's pushing me up into a good posture in reality it isn't because I'm having to use my body weight over the top of it and my tricep to keep me in a good gait pattern so this stick is too high now let me show you what a proper height stick looks like so I'm going to adjust it down to what I'd pre-measured before which is about the right size for me and now you can see when I walk my elbow is straight and because I've got a locked out straight elbow I can actually put all the force of my arm down onto the stick which means the force is coming from my whole upper body my whole torso rather than just from my elbow now this gives me a lot more power to push down on and if I have a weak leg here and I put the stick down like this I can use all of the strength in my upper body to help to support me and to keep me on balance so if you want to measure your stick up properly there's a golden rule for doing so what you should do is you should put your stick on the floor like this and you should let your arm hang by your side and you want your stick handle to line up with the first crease on your wrist here so this wrist crease here is the one that should be lining up with the handle of the stick when it's hanging by your side can do that as a really easy tester at home it will probably feel too short for you when you start but what we want is for your elbow to be straight which pushes you up into a better posture and allows you to use your stick better now the second mistake I see people make with The Walking Stick is they use it in the wrong hand now if you've got a right leg injury you might think it's best to use it in your right hand so you can use it to support you like this when you walk but in reality that is not the right way to be using your walking stick if you have a right legged injury you need to be using it in your left hand now let me explain why this is the case okay so I'm going to put the stick down for a moment when we walk normally and this is the way you've walked for most of your life as you step forward with your left foot your right arm swings forward and this helps to keep your balance and keeps your momentum on your front foot so you can walk normally so as we walk we go opposite leg with opposite hand now if you suddenly start using a stick in your right hand what we're getting is the whole body is having to turn we're off balance with every step and even though it feels like your leg might be a little bit safer when you have the same hand going down as the leg in reality it's making you walk like a peg leg and you're not as stable as you could be so I'll show you a better way to do it so if this is your bad leg you would have it in your left hand you're going to put most of your weight down on your foot but you're going to try and take some through the hand and then you still stay upright and you've got much better balance as a result so even if it feels unnatural what you want to try and do is you want to try and keep your body weight evenly distributed in between the stick and your foot it will keep your gate pattern normal and it will make it easier for you to get rid of that stick eventually if you choose to do so so make sure you're using the opposite hand to the side of the injury and the third mistake I see people make when using a walking stick is Walking with the wrong gate pattern so all of the normal principles of walking should still apply when we're using a stick and I'm going to show you how that works now so a normal walking pattern without a stick should be your heel strikes the floor first then you go over onto your mid foot and then your other leg swings through and as this heel strikes the floor here you push through those toes now none of that changes when you introduce a stick except your stick should go down at the same time as the opposite heel so I'm going to show you how that looks so if I've got a bad left leg I'm going to put my stick and the heel down at the same time and as I go through onto my mid foot my weight is going down through my Straight elbow onto the stick and then as I push through my toes on the left side the stick comes up ready in time for a second heel strike so I'm going to show you on this side so as the heel goes down the stick goes down as well and you can see what this does for my posture it keeps me perfectly upright and balanced I've got my weight evenly distributed between my stick and my foot and then as the heel lifts up and I push through the toes I can lift the stick and carry it through for the next heel strike so that is the gate pattern hopefully someone has shown you how to do that but if they haven't then just watching a few repeats of me doing it might be helpful to you because you want to time that perfectly leave enough of a gap between here for the other leg to swing through don't go too far out to the side don't come across your body it should go probably about six inches wide of this foot as you put it down and strike it down firmly so you can get some purchase on the ground at the same time as your heel strike so I hope that video has been useful I do appreciate your time in watching if you've enjoyed the video please like it subscribe to the channel and drop a comment below and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book it's called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you for watching and I look forward to speaking to you on the next video

Channel: HT Physio – Over-Fifties Specialist Physio

Views: 1,147,434

Keywords: Physiotherapy, Knee Pain, Health, Exercise, Wellness, senior health, Over fifty, total knee replacement, knee arthritis, physical therapy, knee pain, knee replacement, knee pain relief, knee surgery, physical therapy (medical specialty), knee ache, arthritic knee, bob and brad, athlean X, OA knee, knee bend, knee flexion, knee habits, walking, better walking, build strength, muscle build, walking stick, walking stick mistakes, senior

Id: p3zffKDP_F0

Length: 7min 14sec (434 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2023