5 Best Chair Exercises for Ages 65+

In this episode, Farnham’s leading over-50’s physiotherapist, Will Harlow, reveals some of the best chair exercises to build strength and mobility for people over the age of 65!

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If you’re over the age of 65 and you’re looking for some great exercises that you can do from a chair don’t go anywhere because this video is perfect for you if you don’t know who I am my name is will harow and I’m the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio INF

Farum and today I’m going to be giving you some of my best chair exercises for people over the age of 65 now before I show you the exercises I just wanted to let you know these exercises are not going to be suitable for everyone make sure you get checked out by your doctor

Before you try them don’t do them if they cause you any pain and don’t do them if there’s any reason for you why it’s a bad idea so let’s have a look at the exercises now and hopefully you can try them at home so the first great

Chair exercise for people over 65s is the slow sit to stand this is one of my favorite exercises of all time for the people I treat so it’s not possible for me to make a video about chair exercises and not include this one now this one

Does include getting up and out of the chair so if if you require assistance of you know holding on to a frame or something you can use that but for people who want to develop strength in their legs this is a great chair exercise to do so what we’re going to do

Is we’re going to shuffle right to the edge of a chair and we want both feet to be flat on the floor we’re going to take our hands out of the way and put them across our chest like this and then the first thing we’re going to do is lean

Forward in the chair like this we’re taking our nose over our toes we’re going to push up through the feet and stand and to full height and then take a little step back just feel the backs of your legs against the chair and then slowly put that movement into reverse

But the catch is we’re going to do it incredibly slowly on the way down so you stick your bottom out you bend your knees at the same time and you lower lower lower until you feel the chair and the goal here is to land in the chair

Without making any kind of sound the chair shouldn’t squeak it shouldn’t groan it shouldn’t sound like it’s about to collapse because you’ve just dropped on it you should be able to land like a feather so let’s try that again so hands out of the way we’re going to take our

Nose over our toes stand up by pushing up with both the hips and the knees take a little step back and touch the back of the chair like this and then we’re just going to stick the bottom out bend the knees it’s okay to Bend forward as you

Do this that’s the natural way to do it and to the count of four you’re going to lower your bottom onto the seat and land like this now if you’re doing this exercise correctly you’re going to get stronger quads which are these muscles here very very important for the knees

And the hips and also the glute muscles which are very very important for your knees your hips and your lower back as well so it’s a fantastic allrounder exercise if you can do five to 10 of those in a row several times per day that’s a fantastic start to your

Chair-based exercise program the second chair exercise I’ve got for you is called the cycle Crunch and this is an exercise that works the core and the abdominals which are the muscles of the mid Rift around here and these are very very important for controlling your spine so if you suffer with back pain

This might be a good exercise to help you treat it it’s also a very important exercise for people who want to remain independent and mobile so the exercise is quite easy we’re going to start off sitting on a chair with about half of your leg supported by the chair like

This and we start up sitting nice and Tall with our hands up behind our ears now it doesn’t matter if you can’t get your arms back like this just having them here is absolutely fine and what we’re going to do is we’re going to work opposite hand with opposite leg at the

Same time so you’re going to lift a leg and bring the opposite elbow across as if to try and touch it now don’t worry if you can’t touch your elbow to your knee there’s absolutely no reason for you to have to get it to touch the knee

And as you do this exercise we don’t want you to be able to feel your spine hurting it shouldn’t feel like you’re twisting against what your spine wants you to do but you should feel that the muscles in your tummy have to activate to move you closer towards your knee so

You can see here this combines a couple of different movements it combines hip flexion which is this movement it combines rotation of the spine and it also involves a little bit of flexion which is coming down like this as well now all of these movements are controlled to a certain extent by the

Muscles around the core they at least help to control your body as you do them so it won’t take many repetitions of this exercise to start to feel this area of the body working you might also feel it in your obliques which are these muscles down the sides of your stomach

Type area and this exercise is a brilliant one to strengthen the core and keep you strong all over so I’d recommend you do a set of these trying to get to between five and 15 on each side depending on how fit and mobile you already are and stopping when you start

To get a working ache in the Target muscles now if you can do that for about two or three sets per day that is a fantastic way to get a stronger core and another great addition to your chair exercises the next exercise I’ve got for you is another one for stronger muscles

In your legs and this Exercise Works your quads which are these muscles here and your hip flexors which are a bit higher up towards the hip I call this the knee extension leg raise and it’s a really easy one for people to do especially after surgery or after a

Problem like arthritis this can really help so what we’re going to do this time is sit very far back in our chair so that our back is supported by the back rest and our tummy muscles are nice and relaxed now this exercise is important

To just work one side at a time so don’t be tempted to do both at the same time so I’m going to work my right side here and all I do for the first stage of the movement is lift the leg like this I’m now going to just pull my toes up to

Activate the quads here already I can feel this muscle working then I’m just going to try and gently bump that leg up like that and then back down so that’s where the leg raise section happens now it’s very important that you do not do this exercise if you’re someone who suffers

With sciatica because doing that movement does put a bit of tension on the sciatic nerve but if you’re not a sciatic Aura this is a great exercise for working the quads without using weight and you can do it from a chair now you might find that the back of your

Leg starts to feel tight when you do that if it’s not sciatic pain it’s just like a tension that could be a good thing because it could help you to stretch the hamstrings there and you should get more flexible as you practice but after time you’ll start to feel this

Muscle here is working quite hard and the hip flexor here is having to work to lift that whole leg up so I’d recommend you keep going until you get a working ache in your thigh and then swap over to the other side so again we reclin back

In the chair we straighten the leg like this pull the toes up and just a little bump up in the air like that we’re not trying to pull the leg right up as high as we can we’re just trying to activate it so that it comes up off the chair and

Then back down so this is a really nice exercise just to get those quads working again this exercise is really good for people who’ve got a knee injury or a problem that means they can’t do squats or L lunges or things that involve them weight bearing if you can’t

Do things like the leg press at the gym again this is a really good alternative and doing 10 or 15 on each side three times per day on each leg would be a fantastic fantastic start to your exercise program from a chair and hopefully give you some stronger legs

Now the next chair exercise I’ve got for you is a fantastic one for stronger hip muscles but before I show you it I just wanted to let you know that 88% of people who watch these videos have not yet subscribed to the channel so if that’s you scroll down hit the Subscribe

Button it’s absolutely free it just means you’ll be the first to hear about our videos when they come out and it really helps the channel so thank you in advance if you do that let’s talk about the next exercise and for this we call it the banded hip abduction you need one

Of these guys which is a strong resistance band you can pick these up really cheaply online but all we’re going to do with this is we’re going to slip it around both legs and we want to bring it up on the legs until it’s just above the knee on both sides like this

Now this is a great exercise for your glute muscles which are the ones that support you when you walk they support you when you Squat and when you bend super important muscles for lots of different problems now I’m going to put my feet in a funny position so I’m going

To have my feet slightly wider than my knees to start this movement so my thighs are now in internal rotation if you can’t do that you can start with your feet here just do what’s comfortable for you I want to start like this cuz I can feel it better when I do

That so this is my start position feet are facing forward and all I’m going to do is use the muscles in my legs to push the band out and apart and hold at the end squeezing my bottom together if I can can and then slowly bringing it back

To there so again this is a lovely exercise for your hip muscles and your glutes but we want to try and keep everything around here relax so we’re trying not to use our back muscles and we’re trying not to use the other muscles in our legs we’re trying to do

The pulling from here so we should almost visualize this area trying to squeeze to open up pull the band apart and if you’re doing it right you’ll start to get a bit of tension in your butttock muscles it should feel like the bum is working quite hard as we do this

And if you keep repeating you’ll start to get a bit of an ache around your hip around your glutes as a really good sign it means things are working and I would like to give people about 10 to 20 repetitions in a row for most you can do

This very easily from underneath your desk if you’re a desk worker or someone who likes to watch TV this is a super easy exercise to do but you need to take it to the point where it starts to ache it’s very important to note that things

Are not going to improve unless you find them challenging so we have to keep doing them until things start to get a little bit achy a little bit uncomfortable and that’s a good place to stop so that’s another great exercise for stronger legs that you can do from a

Chair so I’ve given you four strengthening exercises and now we’re going to talk about one exercise that can mobilize your spine and help to reduce stiffness as well it’s a fantastic exercise for seniors to do from a chair it’s called the seated cat Cow or the seated cat camel and it’s a

Fantastic exercise to help you loosen everything up in your shoulders your midback and your lower back as well right it’s really easy to do so we’re going to start off on the edge of the chair again this time we’re going to sit up tall hands are going to go on our

Knees like this and they’re going to remain in that position throughout we’re going to alternate between two positions the first position which I think is probably the cat is going down like this so we’re going to sink back into this movement the head drops down the shoulders round it’s almost like our

Shoulder blades are coming apart and we’re sinking back towards the back of the chair without letting go of the knees and then we’re going to come back to neutral and then we’re going to push ourselves into the other position which is pushing the chest out keeping the neck slightly

Raised and rounding the spine into almost a reverse C shape extending through the thoracic spine like this so again we’re going to go down into this position so head down round the shoulders sink back into it and then we’re going to come up into the opposite pull the shoulders back pull the chest

Out round the spine like this in a reverse shape and hold for a couple of seconds and alternating between these two positions it might feel like there’s a bit of stiffness in your back when you do it but when you stop you should feel

A lot Freer and a lot more able to move so I reckon most people would benefit from doing about a minute’s worth of work on this so rather than counting repetitions just time yourself for a minute and Alternate really slowly between these two positions and try and do that quite regularly especially again

If you’re someone who sits a lot of the day it’s a great exercise for Mobility it will help your spine move better you should have less back pain as a result and your posture should also get better as well so those are some of my favorite chair exercises for people over the age

Of 65 I hope that video has been useful if you found it good and you want to employ these exercises in your routine do drop a comment below and let me know if you liked it and if you want to get more from me I’ve got loads more

Exercises like the ones in this video in my book it’s called thriving Beyond 50 it’s perfect for people over 65 who want to get fit active healthy and mobile again and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you so much for watching I appreciate your time

And I’ll see you on the next video