Seniors: How to Stop leaning forward when you walk!

backwards stair step to improve forward lean [Music] a lot of people have trouble with their walking they might be shuffling walking with their feet too wide apart relying on a walker or a cane I'm Doug I've been a physical therapist for 30 years and in this video I'm going to show you a great exercise to help you not lean forward when you walk now again so many people have this trouble this is actually a leading reason why people fall because when you walk leaning forward your center of balance is not inside of your body instead it's out in front of you so if anything disturbs your balance whether it's you stumbling on something or something bumping into you it takes a lot more energy to recover your balance because it's not in the center of your body so we know that people that lean forward have a much greater likelihood of having a fall now there are many reasons why people lean forward and some of them are good people that have a lot of pain who have problem with their vision and can't see the ground they might find that the only way they can safely get around is to look down and in those cases there really isn't much you can do but that's not everybody a lot of people who lean forward do so out of habit they just feel safer leaning forward in fact it's a strange thing but a lot of people that are having trouble with their walking they feel safer shuffling with their feet wide apart and leaning forward I guess they feel that they're almost closer to the ground so it's less likely that they'll fall the problem is those people tend to fall one of the best exercises to help prevent forward leaning is what's known as backwards stair stepping now what that means is basically walking backwards up one single step over and over now why does that help well it does a number of things one of the main reasons that people tend to lean forward is because their proprioception is off they feel as though they're actually standing up straight when they're really leaning forward and this is a very common problem proprioception is the awareness of where we are in space When We're Young we don't really have good proprioception we learn proprioception through playing through doing sports and we develop it throughout our lives you can make your sense of proprioception better and better the problem is if you don't do anything that challenges your balance your proprioception gets worse your awareness of where you are in space just gets worse and worse it declines so one way that you can improve it is by doing something challenging and doing this exercise of walking backwards up a step it repeatedly challenges your balance and particularly it forces you to move your body from a from a forward position to a standing up position because when you come up on the step you really can't do that unless you're standing up straight for a moment the other thing is it's a great strength and exercise it's going to work the muscles in your hips in your low back in your buttocks and all of those muscles help you stand up straighter so here's how to do the exercise now the best way to do it is to have a stairwell with a rail now if you have a stairwell with your rail you want to just use the very first step and then just step backwards up on top of it and then come back down forward again but if you don't have that or if that's too hard for you to do I recommend that you use something that's about three or four inches high it could be a phone book it could be a block of wood whatever you have that's about three to four inches tall that will support your weight will work you want to hold on to something like a countertop or a rail or something sturdy nearby you can hold on with both hands or just with one hand and what you want to do is step backwards up on top of the step with both feet and then step forward again now at first you might only be able to do three or four repetitions before you feel tired you want to stop right then if you're feeling fatigued the last thing you want to do is keep going because it's very likely that you could fall what you want to do is do this exercise once a day you never want to do it more than once a day and each time that you do it you want to do it for as many repetitions as you can so one person that might be three or four repetitions for another person that might be 30 repetitions now the goal with this exercise is to try to step backwards at the most 30 times once you can do it 30 times without holding on to anything you're fine you don't need to continue to do this exercise but if you're struggling with this or if you're leaning forward or if you're feeling like you're not able to do it without holding on for dear life keep practicing it only do the exercise once a day because you don't want to over train if you do this several times a day it's not going to make you get better faster and what it can do is lead to a fall I hope you found this video helpful if you want to see more videos like this please subscribe to my channel foreign [Music]

Channel: Balance Rehab by Doug Weiss, PT, DPT

Views: 14,962

Keywords: Balance training, fall prevention, rehabilitation, stroke rehab, fitness, wellness, Yoga, Senior Fitness, Proprioception

Id: 4rCoH4MaMB8

Length: 5min 30sec (330 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023