This Walking Mistake Leads to FALLS in Ages 65+

To subscribe to 3-Tip Friday, Will’s free weekly email where he shares his best health tips, new videos and fascinating research, go here: https://info.ht-physio.co.uk/3tf

To get a copy of Will’s new book, Thriving Beyond Fifty, you can find it on Amazon below:
UK link: https://amzn.to/3mAISFv
US link: https://amzn.to/3J1ACGi
(Amazon Affiliate links) Follow us on Instagram for more content: https://www.instagram.com/htphysioofficial/

In this episode, Farnham’s leading over-50’s physiotherapist, Will Harlow, reveals one major walking mistake that commonly leads to falls in people over the age of 65.

If you’re suffering from nagging knee pain that hurts in the morning and stops you from walking as far as you’d like, you can take our free knee pain guide – which will give you 5 expert tips to put a stop to knee pain at home – by visiting here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/knee-pain-guide-download/

To get in touch about sponsorships or promos, send a message to: hello@ht-physio.co.uk

If you’re over-50 with a painful problem in the Farnham, Surrey area, you can learn more about how Will Harlow and HT Physio can help you overcome a painful problem here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/

**Any information in this video should not be used as a substitute for individual medical advice. Please seek advice from your local healthcare professional before taking action on the information in this video.** Full policy here: https://ht-physio.co.uk/injury-disclaimer/

there is one big mistake that many seniors make when walking that can lead to a high risk of Falls and in today’s video I’m going to reveal what that mistake is and how you can avoid it at home 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 in farum and today we’re going to be revealing the one big mistake that seniors make when walking that can lead to Falls and how to fix it now I’m going to show you how to fix this problem in just a moment and what the problem is of course but before I do I just want to let you know that the advice in this video is not suitable for everyone make sure you get checked out by your doctor before you give it a try and if it causes you any pain just avoid it anyway let’s have a look at the mistake now and how to solve it so the one major walking mistake that can lead to a higher risk of Falls is slow walking now I understands that walking slowly is not always in your control some people as they lose strength and Mobility naturally walk slower but many people erroneously believe that walking slowly is actually safer than walking quickly we sort of assume that oh if we’re rushing we’re more likely to trip and fall but with walking that’s not usually the case now slow walking I like to think of as slowly riding a bike it’s the same kind of thing if you ride a bike nice and quickly the momentum keeps you stable you don’t wobble too much from side to side but if you’ve ever tried riding a bike really slowly you’ll know that you start to wobble quite a lot from side to side because of the contact with the ground now walking is kind of similar if you walk quite briskly like this the momentum keeps you level so your hips don’t drop to one side your shoulders don’t drop and you keep your head basically quite level when you walk but if you walk very slowly what can happen is there’s more movement in the on the foot on the ground so you start to get this kind of wobbling like that and that can lead to instability we also are spending longer on one leg which means the hip is more likely to drop to one side and add those things all together and it makes falling more likely now if you have been consciously walking slowly obviously you can try and walk a bit quicker and that should be better for you but if you’re one of the many people who walks slowly because you can’t walk quickly I’m going to show you some exercises to help you fix that so I’ve got three exercises to show you today we’re going to be working on all of the muscle groups that cause faster walking when they’re strong and we’re going to make them stronger for you so you can walk a bit quicker so the first muscle group that’s responsible for faster walking when it’s strong is the carves and your calves are the propulsion that forces you forward like this so if you look at my right leg my heel hits the floor first and then I push off using my toes which is the calf muscle at work to propel me forward and research has shown that people with weak carves walk between 30 and 50% slower than age matched counterparts who have stronger carves so we’re going to do a couple of different things for the carves we’re going to do a heel raise which is a super easy exercise I’m going to show you the basic version first and then we’re going to go on to a more advanced version if you can handle it so to make this exercise work we’re just going to use a wall you’re going to put two hands on the wall you’re going to stand facing the wall like this keeping your posture upright and all we’re going to do is using those toes we’re going to rise up as high as we can squeeze those carves at the top and then slowly come back down so we should go two seconds up squeeze for two seconds and then three or 4 seconds back down that’s about the right Tempo to get the best work for your cves now I’d like you to be able to do at least 15 or 20 of those but if you felt you could do that all day we me need to make that a bit harder and one of the ways we can make it harder is by using a ruck sack so I’ve got my ruck sack here it’s filled with some books and Diaries and things just to make it a bit heavier I’m going to put it on my back like this and I’m going to repeat so now I’ve added a couple of kilogram to my body weight so now we’re going to go up again squeeze at the top and then slowly back down again so nothing changes we’re just adding some load onto our backs and you might be surprised at how much load you can take through your carves because even in people where they’re quite weak comparatively speaking this is a strong muscle group it has a lot of muscular tissue in there they’re type two fibers which are powerful they allow us to rise up really high and they don’t fatigue very quickly because there’s also some type one fibers in there as well so what we’re going to do is we’re going to work up to about 20 repetitions in a row if you can do more than 20 repetitions you need to find something heavier to put in your rock sack so you want to be failing as if you can’t do anym at around the 15 to 20 rep Mark that would be perfect and you’re going to do three sets of that with one minute’s rest in between and that’s a great prescription to build some stronger carves the next muscle group we’re going to work today that are really important for propelling you forward are the glutes and not just all of the glutes but glutitis Maximus which is the biggest one in the hip here that is your most important muscle when walking for propelling you forward because as we walk our hip should go out behind us to push us off and it’s that glute Max that’s doing the work so this exercise is going to strengthen that muscle it’s called the donkey kick and you just need the back of a chair to make it work so this is how we’re going to make the exercise work you’re going to put two hands on the back of a chair and you’re going to lean forward like this hinging at your hips so your back is still nice nice and straight hopefully you can see from the angle here that I’ve not rounded my spine I’ve got my back nice and straight like this you can imagine you’re pushing your bottom out behind you if that makes it easier now we’re going to work one side at a time so I’m going to work my right leg and what we’re going to do here is we’re going to bring the knee up like this in front of us and then keeping a bend in the knee we’re going to rise up and behind without moving the spine and then repeat so up squeeze at the top and then down up squeeze at the top and down now at the top there I’m getting a nice contraction of that glute because I’m going into what we call hip extension which is where the hip is going behind me and it’s my glute that’s doing 90% of the work the other 10% there is coming from my hamstrings which are the muscles at the back of the thigh and if you feel doing this exercise that your hamstrings these muscles are cramping it means you’re not using your glute properly you’re using your hamstrings to do more than their fair share of work so to make it more effective focus on squeezing a pencil between your bottom and keeping that pencil squeezed as you rise and you’ll feel more of a contraction here and by the end of a working set of about 10 to 15 repetitions usually for most people you’re going to get a working ache right here in that buttter so I’ll show you the other side so this time nothing changes keep the back nice and straight we’re going to now stand on the right leg the left left knee comes up and then out like that so up in front and then up behind we want to keep that angle of the spine as constant as we can for people with lower back pain they sometimes try and use their back if that’s the case you might be going too high so here is absolutely fine to stop you might not actually have as much range of motion as me because as we age we do lose hip extension so don’t worry if you can’t get it as high but what we want to feel is that contraction in the glute don’t worry too much about the angle of the knee we want to keep a slight Bend but it doesn’t have to remain constant throughout have a play around with different angles and stick with the one where you can feel it most in the Target muscle so again 10 or 15 repetitions in a row one minute’s rest between sets three times over and then you’re going to build stronger glutes as a result before we go any further I just want to tell you about three tip Friday three tip Friday is my weekly email that I sent out to my list and it features three of the most interesting things I found that week it could be a health tip it could be a piece of research I’m reading or it could be a new tool that I found to be really useful for helping people get more mobile it’s totally free I just send it out once a week There’s No annoying promos inside and you can sign up for it by going down below this video and entering your email in the three tip Friday link the final exercise we’re going to do today is called the power Bridge and it’s basically a normal bridge but we’re going to try and use a little bit more Force to get those muscles working not just harder but quicker as well which is really important for propelling you forward when you walk so the bridge is a great exercise it works the quads and the glutes and these are both very important walking muscle groups so the bridge is nice and simple what we’re going to do is lie on your back nice and flat you can use a pillow or no pillow just depending on how your neck feels I’m going to use one here and you want to bend your knees as much as you feel you can and this is important because it helps you activate your glutes better now I like to tell people if they want to activate their glutes we should mostly be pushing through the heels of the feet so you can have your feet flat but I’m going to raise them just to demonstrate that all the power here is going to be going through my heels I don’t really like people pushing up through their toes you can feel it in different areas if you do that but pushing through the heels helps to activate those glutes so what we’re going to do hands down we’re going to first of all flatten the lower back down into the beds just to switch the core on raise your toes if you want to push through the heels lift up just to parallel like this and at the top we’re going to squeeze the bum together now if you look at my line I’m not going to my maximum CU that’s going to overextend my lumber spine so I’m actually stopping here so the big mistake people make is they overextend they go to here so we just want to stop here now I’m going to put all of that together in the actual Pace we’re going to do it for the exercise so we’re going to flatten and push squeeze at the top remember I’m only going 3/4 of the way and then down so again flatten and push hold and then back down the reason I’m doing it quite quickly on the way up like this is because that is getting the glute Max working in a powerful position exactly as it would be trying to if we’re trying to increase your walking speed when you’re on your feet so we’re trying to replicate exactly what we would do in a walking gate with the exercise we’re doing now this is why it’s really important that we don’t overextend because if you’re doing it quite quickly and you overextend and you go too high to here you can really Jam your facet joints together and your back is not going to be happy the next day so that is the power Bridge again I’d recommend doing 10 to 15 in a row have a rest one minute then do three sets in total and then you’re going to build stronger glutes and legs as a result so that’s the one big mistake that leads to Falls in seniors I hope you found this video useful if you have taken something from it then do leave us a comment because I love to read your thoughts and it does help us to improve these videos in the future so thank you if you take the time to do that and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book it’s got loads more tips and tricks and advice like the stuff in this video it’s called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you for watching and I’ll see you on the next video