Age-Defying Strength: Surprising Benefits of Horse Stance for Seniors (and how to do it safely)

the horse stance is a position used in many forms of martial arts it's extremely beneficial for your ankle and hip mobility as well as your quadriceps and glute strength but is it really a good exercise for seniors for most the answer is a resounding yes but with the appropriate modifications in this video I'm going to show you how to do the traditional horse stance exercise plus some age appropriate modifications for seniors so that you can do the horse stance without causing hip or knee pain let's dive in there are many different ways to do the horse stance with varying widths depths and angulation of your toes one of the most common ones is known as the fstep horse stance where you turn toes out step one heels out step two toes out step three heels out step four toes out to where they Point straight forwards or slightly outwards and so that's the traditional method now ideally this lines you up slightly wider than shoulder width so if you don't want to go through all of that pivoting on your knees which really isn't great on your knees especially if you have arthritis just position your feet slightly wider than shoulder width find a comfortable position where your toes are pointed where they fall naturally and that's going to be probably the best position for you then you want to sink straight down so you don't want to lean forwards and sit back you want to actually drop straight down on your heels now in order to do this you have to counterbalance your trunk by pushing your knees forwards in order to keep your trunk upright you can lean forwards a little bit and that shifts the emphasis back onto your glutes and that's typically how I would recommend squatting but if you are trying to do the horse stce textbook you do want to shift your knees forwards and keep your trunk as upright as possible which requires a lot of ankle dors of flexion Mobility that depth also is really hard on your knees particularly if you have knee arthritis so next I'm going to show you some modifications to make this exercise more accessible to seniors particularly if you have some NE arthritis the horse stce was originally named because it looks like someone riding a horse where their feet are straddled over the sides of the horse and so to start out actually straddle a chair where you're facing towards the back of the chair this way you have something to hold on to for balance you're sitting down on something for safety so you can't fall and it limits your depth how far down you can get with your legs so now just spread your legs out and you're going to drive your knees outwards into hip external rotation you want to try to bend your knees so that your feet are directly under the line of your knees and then you're just going to do an isometric pushup so you're pushing your heels down into the ground you're really probably not going to go very far it's very likely that your bottom might even stay in contact with the chair so you're just going to slightly unload for this first step now the chair here also helps you to maintain your balance and helps you stay a little bit more upright in your trunk so it's just an isometric push down into the floor where you're unloading your bottom but realistically not lifting it up all that much now as you get a Little Bit Stronger you can unload your bottom slightly more and slightly more but your thighs will still probably contact the chair just a little bit as you progress then you can turn the chair around so now instead of having the back rest to hold on to this challenges your balance and stability a little bit more you don't have something to help push you and keep you upright so now hold your arms out in front of you as if you were grabbing a tree or grabbing a barrel out in front of you you're going to still have your feet underneath of your knees and then it's just an isometric press into the ground where you're digging your heels down into the floor and acting as if you were going to lift your bottom up off of the chair now as you get stronger here again you can start to slightly unload your bottom again you'll probably still touch there with your thighs and get to where you can hold this for 10 15 30 seconds or so now once you build up to 30 seconds of being able to do a horse stance with the chair now it's time to move on to a horse stance without the chair for safety purposes I would recommend when you're first learning this to hold on to the back of a chair particularly one that's not going to tip in case you fall backwards so you might use the back of a couch or a counter or some heavy chair that's not going to tip over on you so again you're going to sit down and it's just like you were sitting with the chair underneath of you legs straddled out if you can't go to that depth where a dow Rod won't roll off your legs that's perfectly okay just go to the depth that you can think about pushing your knee knees outwards and trying to keep your trunk as upright as possible that might require pushing your hips forwards a little bit to keep your trunk more upright and then slowly as you get better at this you can sink to deeper and deeper levels but don't sacrifice depth for safety because you don't want to end up getting stuck now this is an isometric exercise something you want to hold for a long period of time but just hold it for an amount of time that you feel comfortable with you don't want to cause any pain you don't want to risk falling so if you can only hold it for five seconds and then you have to come back up that's okay you can hold it for 10 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute that's great as well just start at a depth and a time that you feel comfortable with and progress from there now as you start to get better at this and can hold for longer periods of time you may Al start to challenge your balance in other ways for example you can do punches while holding that horse stance position start out on a chair and then as you get stronger and more skilled with it you can also add in punches as you're just freestanding so that was the horse stance exercise and the modifications for seniors and just to review you want to start out facing backwards on a chair like this doing an isometric press progress to facing forwards on the chair still doing an isometric press and then eventually ending up to where you're doing the exercise without a chair in just a freestanding position so hopefully you did find this video helpful if you would like more tips to improve your leg strength and improve your balance and Mobility without causing hip or knee pain make sure to give this video a like And subscribe our channel so you can get notified of our future videos thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: More 4 Life

Views: 9,786

Keywords: physical therapy, st louis, saint louis, More 4 Life, manual physical therapy, physical therapist, horse stance, horse stance benefits, horse stance exercise, horse stance exercise benefits, horse stance for seniors, horse stance for beginners, horse stance knee pain, horse stance hip mobility, benefits of horse stance

Id: -DqCL5JrL18

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024