This Fall Prevention Week, I want to discuss how all of our 2MW classes help us to improve our balance and stability and help us to prevent falls. Yes, all of our 2MW classes, standing AND seated.
Balance is one of 7 dimensions that we cover in every class, the others being cardio, toning, flexibility, coordination, agility, and memory. While we sometimes put extra focus on one element or another during different routines, these elements are often inter-woven in movements that we do, making it hard to say you are working one thing without working several of the others at the same time.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways that a few of these elements work with balance:
Toning & Balance
This is a big one! The strength of our lower legs, upper legs, and core is essential to our balance.
A strong core (back, abdominals, hips and glutes) is important when it comes to stability. We do core work every time we bend forward, back, or side, or through any twisting motion of the upper body. Does “Surfin USA” or “Fun Fun Fun” sound familiar? Those routines are heavily focused on core work.
Your feet and your ankles are your first line of defense in fall prevention. We do a lot with our feet, ankles, and lower legs. Any time we tap our toes, tap our heels, walk our feet in and out (think toe-heel side to side), flex and point the feet, roll our ankles, that is all building up the musculature of the part of the body that connects directly to the floor to help keep you upright.
The rest of our legs are important as well, which we work through kicks, lifts, marches, and side steps or side points. We also vary the speed at which we do these moves, sometimes focusing on quick movement and faster reactions, sometimes working on slower movements and more control. Reaction and control are both incredibly important when it comes to fall prevention, and keeping your muscles strong helps with both.
Flexibility & Balance
Research shows that the following have an impact on balance and stability: lower body mobility, spinal flexibility, and upper body alignment. In other words, maintaining flexibility and mobility of the entire body plays a role in fall prevention.
One way this comes into play: As mentioned above, our ankle is one of the first lines of defense in fall prevention. Having the appropriate ROM (range of motion) in the ankle can help us to maintain and regain our balance more quickly than would happen without that ROM.
Upper body flexibility is also important. Tight muscles in the upper body can pull your body into an unbalanced posture—we’ve all seen (or maybe personally experience) that forward shoulder, sunken chest, head down position that many older adults have. This pulls a lot of your weight forward, off of your center of mass, into a position you will constantly have to fight in order to maintain balance. Compare that to an upright posture: each piece of your body is stacked directly on the one just below it. If we think of our body like a stack of blocks, it’s clear that this is a more stable position than having the top block pushed in a way that it is barely on top of the one below it.
We practice a lot of reaching in our classes: reaching side, reaching up, reaching forward, reaching across. One reason we do this is to help our core flexibility, and our ability to do this functional and important movement of reaching. Also if you reach far enough, you can put yourself (purposely) in an unstable position and in turn practicing finding your stability again, a crucial part of our balance practice. Think about the opening sequence of “Runaround Sue.” This is a routine that doesn’t directly work on flexibility or balance, but utilizes that reaching movement here. Our more dedicated stretch songs like “Feeling Good” or “Ain’t No Sunshine” will really use these reaching moves, as well as all different kinds of upper body, lower body, and core stretches.
The final example I want to give in regards to flexibility and balance requires a creative way of thinking, but it’s what I tend to picture the most. Think of trees blowing in the wind. The trees that can bend and sway are able to withstand wind and storms much more easily than those which are immovable—those are the ones most likely to break or to fall. Our bodies are similar. If we can bend and move, we can use this to prevent a fall.
Cognition & Balance
While “cognition” in and of itself is not one of our elements, it encompasses the coordination and the memory element, and the Mental dimension of Wellness (one of 4 that we cover in each class along with Physical, Emotional, & Social)
Your brain is the most important aspect of your balance. Your brain takes in the signals that the rest of our body is getting from its connection to the environment, and then sends back out the signals on how we need to respond. If you read our last article on the “balance pop quiz,” we discussed a few scenarios that could lead to a fall, one of which being walking to the bathroom and not seeing your dog lying on the floor until you’re tripping over him (Guess where I came up with that example??) In this situation, our brain can take in information through our eyes, possibly our ears or even our nose, to indicate that there is an animal in our way. If that happens early enough, we can redirect our path out of the way of the dog. If we don’t get those signals in time, the next signal will likely come from our feet or our legs feeling that we have just ran into our dog! Now we need a faster response time to step where we need to step in order to not fall. A brain that has stayed healthy through memory training and that can send and receive quick signals to coordinate the movements of our body will be much more likely to help us prevent a fall (and to not hurt our precious dog!)
Our newest routine that is really challenging a lot of us mentally is “One” (the Broadway one!). Some faster ones that add a level of cognitive challenge are “Dancing My Way” or “Do Way Diddy.” Of course, these are just a couple of examples, and I'm sure many of you will agree that the memory and coordination elements are utilized quite a bit in our classes!
Agility & Balance
I see agility and balance as very close relatives of each other. The main way we utilize agility in our classes is as “balance in motion.” It’s the quick changes of direction, quick change of weight placement, and quick reaction time in moving and placing your feet. If balance practice is slow, agility practice is the faster version of it. And in life, we need both, and improving one with help to improve the other.
We practice a lot of movements that move our feet—sometimes with and sometimes without moving the body—to the front, back, side, diagonal, or across the body. Let’s again look at the above example with the dog and think of how being able to take a quick step in any direction might help you prevent a fall in this situation. We were most likely just walking forwards, but now suddenly we need to change direction and step…somewhere. Maybe that’s a small step back. Maybe that’s a big step side. Maybe it’s touching your foot across your body, re-centering your weight, and proceeding forward. Having practice moving in all of these directions, shifting your weight with the foot movement when necessary, is where agility practice becomes functional in our fall prevention practice.
A couple of my favorite agility routines are “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Can you picture them and how we have to quickly change our footing from one position to another in all directions?
Everything that has been covered so far is an aspect of EVERY class, whether standing or seated. Of course, in the standing classes, we get a little more focused balance practice. In fact, every standing class has at least one routine dedicated to Balance. This routine will often include:
Tandem walks (stepping the heel of one foot to the toe of the other foot, like a balance beam)
Toe stands (standing only on your toes with your heels lifted off the ground)
Single leg stands (just how it sounds!)
Grapevines (alternating steps front, side, back, side as you travel in one direction)
Ron de jambs/leg circles (drawing a semi-circle on the floor with one foot while standing on the other foot)
Gaze shifts (in any of the above positions, shifting your head and eyes to the side, down, up, or even closing your eyes)
And, what can add to the challenge, is that these are generally SLOW routines. Balance that happens quickly falls more under the element of Agility. But moving slowly through a position or holding it is where you will really get that balance practice.
It is important to remember that improving your balance does not have to mean actively practicing balancing. By continuing to improve the health of your mind and your body, you will be working towards improving your balance and preventing falls.
Happy Fall Prevention!
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