Tag Archives: balance training

Balance and agility are an important component of fitness.

Train like an athlete with the landmine single-leg deadlift

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You know you could always use a little extra strength. Strong legs, in particular, will help you excel in activities such as running, hiking, tennis and skiing.

More importantly, strength is a key component to avoiding injuries. If you are looking to up your game and need a leg and core strengthener, try the landmine single-leg Romanian deadlift. Don’t be intimidated by the name!

If we break it down, the base move—a deadlift—is a bend-and-lift movement. It’s simply picking up a stationary weight off the floor, with no momentum. The landmine single-leg Romanian deadlift will target your posterior chain; the hamstrings, gluteal muscles and the core. It’s a unilateral movement that builds stability, strength and power throughout the posterior chain. Performing it provides you a unique training effect because you combine elements of a free-weight and machine-based exercise. Furthermore, this particular lift will really activate the muscles located through the core to maintain proper form throughout the full range of motion.

Landmine deadlift is a type of deadlift that features a barbell placed in a Landmine attachment. This particular attachment safely anchors the barbell to the floor. If you don’t have access to one, simply wedge the barbell in the corner of two walls.

The biomechanics of so many sports involve the power and strength of one leg, (running, soccer and football) so developing unilateral strength is important. In reality, most time in daily life is spent on one leg or the other, with minimal time on both legs. Any time you perform a single leg exercise, the inherent instability is a wonderful training stimuli. A good coach or trainer uses varieties like this landmine squat not only to prevent staleness or overtraining in a program, but to encourage proper form. Train like an athlete, with proper alignment and stability of the spine in the deadlift and any other exercise you choose.

Starting position

Start in an upright position while holding the bar close to your body. Hold the hand opposite your planted foot at hip level.

Maintain a slight bend in the knee, and push through the heel of the standing foot.

Keep your shoulders relaxed, head and eyes up (or in line with your spine), and core engaged.

Lower the bar by flexing at your hips, as one leg lifts back up off the floor.

Tip: Focus on moving the rear leg and torso as one unit, maintaining postural control.

Return to the starting position

Once you reach the bottom of the move, quickly contract the glutes and hamstrings to drive the non-weight-bearing leg back to your starting position.

For newbies:

Start by practicing a traditional Romanian deadlift using a free weight. Make sure the hip doesn’t “open up” as the bar gets closer to the floor. 

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/features/train-like-an-athlete-with-the-landmine-single-leg-deadlift/article_166d1696-8f14-11ee-882e-53a650385d63.html

Save a fall with strength and balance

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We take our balance for granted—until we have an embarrassing fall.

For youngsters, they typically shake off a fall. A young person has no problem slipping a sock on standing up. That’s a demonstration of balance and strength. Those past a certain age, however, usually sit down to pull on socks or sneakers. The fear of falling is a real concern. One of three older adults suffer a fall each year. Falls claimed 60,000 lives in 2012 and 2013. Falls are a serious health concern for older adults, alongside the cascade of other debilitating factors and a loss of independence.

Balance training is the mainstay of a fall prevention program, as well as strength and coordination. Lower body weakness increases the odds of falling fourfold. Unfortunately, there are other risk factors that contribute to falls. This includes foot problems, improper footwear like sneakers or slippers without traction and tight ankles. A limited range of motion in your ankles can affect balance and the simple ability to step up. Vision and environmental hazards in the house, like loose rugs or clutter, can contribute to falls as well.

One of the best things you can do as an adult is to make sure your gluteal medius and gluteal maximus muscles are strong. These posterior muscles are prime movers and important for stability. Making sure your glutes are working well, in conjunction with ankle mobility and stability, will help you move around with grace and confidence, and not fall.

Try to the following exercises every day.

Heel rise rocker

• Rise upward onto your toes and immediately rock back onto your heels as you lift your toes up towards your shins. Aim for 10-15 reps daily. Use a wall for support if needed.

Alphabet

• Stand on your right leg with your opposite foot off the ground close to your right foot.

• Push your hips back slightly, into a quarter squat. Keep your torso engaged, and the weight balanced on the whole foot.

• With your foot in the air, write the letters of the alphabet with your foot using small movements.

• Repeat on the left leg.

Bridging—single leg

• Lie face-up with your arms by your side, knees bent and feet flat on the ground.

• Squeeze your glutes and lift your hips off the ground until your knees, hips and shoulders are in a straight line.

• Extend one leg, foot flexed, and keep it extended.

• Lower and lift your hips 12 times. Repeat on the other side.

Clam Shell

• In a side-lying position, hips slightly flexed and the knees bent, raise your top knee off the bottom knee by contracting the hip muscles. This exercise mimics the opening of a clamshell.

• Avoid rolling or rotating your torso as you lift your knee.

Tree Pose

Tree pose develops balance, stability  and poise. It strengthens the muscles of the supporting leg and foot.

• Stand firm on the right leg. Use a wall for support if needed.

• Bend the left leg out to the side, hold the foot and press the sole of your right foot into the top of your right inner thigh.

• Straighten the right knee and press the left knee back, in line with the left hip.

• Try to balance for 20 seconds before repeating on the left leg.

Published in the Idaho Mountain Express June 16, 2023

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/features/fitness-guru-save-a-fall-with-balance-and-strength/article_dfa2b6ea-0afa-11ee-a111-974c9f3b63a9.html

Five everyday movements you need

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Good habits contribute to optimum health. When it comes to your health, preventing injuries in any sport or activity you enjoy is crucial. No one likes being injured. With a New Year fast approaching, here are five injury-preventing moves to help you get fit without getting hurt. Whether you are a seasoned athlete, or just want to stay in shape, incorporate these moves into your day.

Activate the Core

Include daily core exercises! The core muscles help stabilize the spine and support movement. The following 2 core exercises activate the core in different ways to help initiate all movement, and contribute to strength capacity.

Side Lying Hip Lift

Side Lying Hip Lift -The core muscles help stabilize the spine and support movement.

• Lying on your right side with knees bent (or straight for advanced variation), place right elbow under right shoulder. Push shoulder away from ear to engage shoulder girdle ) .

• Avoid letting rib cage slump toward floor; maintain natural curve of spine.

• Exhale and lift right hip off of floor, and hold for 3 counts.

• Slowly lower to start. 10-12 reps. Switch sides

Heel-on-Toe Crunch

• Begin with your legs straight, left heel on top of right foot.

• Bring left hand behind your head for support, and lift right arm straight up from shoulder.

• Curl up, raising head, neck and shoulders blades off mat, tightening abdominals.

• Slowly return to start position. 10 reps. Switch sides.

Stretch tight hamstrings

Stretch tight hamstrings -Photo by Connie Aronson

Tightness in the back of your legs may be a sign of instability in your core, causing the leg muscles to overwork and shorten. As well, hamstrings are an important muscle to stretch if you have back pain, as they attach to the pelvis, which attaches to the back. An excellent move to ease the tension and strengthen your torso is the inverted hamstring stretch. This move engages your core muscles to help keep you balanced.

• Stand on your left leg with your arms extended to the sides.

• Extend your right leg behind you while hinging your torso forward, keeping your back straight, and slowly return to standing.

• Do 5 reps each side

Foam Roller Alignment

Foam Roller Alignment- Photo by Connie Aronson

We’re all guilty of bending forward while scrolling on our phones, resulting in a “forward head.” For every inch that your head is forward there’s 10 more pounds of pressure on the neck. Reset your alignment by lying on a foam roller.  Lengthening the lumbar erector spinal muscles helps encourage neutral alignment.

• With your knees bent, lie on a roller, head supported and neck in a neutral position.

• Tighten the abdominals.

• Gently roll side to side for 20-30 seconds

The Sock Test

Losing your balance as you get older is no joke. Research has shown that the ability to stand on one foot drastically decreases after the age of 60, along with a rapid increase of falls and injury. The ability to stand on one leg is imperative for gait and function.

The sock test takes the move a step further, and is a fun challenge to build strength capacity and balance.

• Holding a sock, stand on one leg, knee slightly bent.

• Bring your leg up towards you as you put your sock on

• Lower the leg to the floor and repeat with your left foot.

Include these movements, everyday, if you can, to stay fit and supple. Happy healthy New Year!

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/features/fitness-guru-five-everyday-movements-you-need/article_35aaaaf4-86d3-11ed-83e5-6b842192aaff.html

Ankle flexibility for better balance and sports

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The feet and ankles support and cushion the entire weight of the body and are crucial to keep your body balanced. Anyone that has to be on his or her feet all day knows that they bear a lot of pressure while standing. The foot includes 26 bones and 33 joints, all helping you simply stay upright. Added to that are 12 muscles involved in movement of the foot, plus to 19 intrinsic muscles, which support the arches and toes. One of the most important functions of your feet is that stress is distributed correctly though these structures and upwards throughout the entire body.

When it comes to better sports performance—and all weight-bearing activities such as walking and running—you can’t talk about the feet without including the ankles and lower legs. Two big muscles on the back of the leg, the gastrocnemius and soleus, provide movement, and are often tight or stiff. Both of these muscles attach to the heel via the Achilles tendon. These muscles play a big role when you flex your ankles. A limited range of motion in your ankles can affect your sports performance, balance and good squatting and lunge form.

The ankles have to bend. Dorsiflexion involves being able to bring the lower leg over the foot. It occurs anytime your foot hits the ground. If you were lucky enough to watch the Beijing Winter Olympics, consider a figure skater performing loops and axels or an alpine skier’s competing in the slalom or giant slalom events—all demonstrated stunning foot and ankle mobility and function.

Touch the wall test

Touch the wall test

A simple and objective way to see if you ankles aren’t tight is to do the “touch the wall” test.

Find a wall and place a ruler or measuring tape out from the baseboard. Place your foot at approximately 5 or 5.5 inches away from the wall. Be sure to have your foot straight. Keep your heel down as you try to touch the wall with your knee. If you can easily tap the wall, you have good ankle mobility. If you cannot, repeat this movement slowly for 15-20 times. Check your range after you include the following two stretches.

High-step ankle stretch

High step ankle stretch

Place your foot on a high chair or gym box. Be sure to have the foot in neutral alignment. Slowly flex the knee forward to increase the stretch. You should feel it in your ankles and calf. (This is a more advanced stretch.) Repeat 10-12 reps.

BOSU Calf Stretch

The BOSU calf stretch

This is an incredibly effective gastrocnemius and soleus stretch taught by Justin Price, one of the top musculoskeletal assessment and corrective exercise experts in the world. Stand on the round side on a BOSU ball with one leg in front of the other. (Place the BOSU against a wall for safety.) Push the heel of the back foot down into the BOSU, as you stand erect. Keep the heel down and rotate the back leg outward. Hold for a few seconds. Next, bend the knee of the back leg and rotate the leg inward (heel is still down). Perform 6–10 repetitions on both sides.

Published in the Idaho Mountain Express

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/features/fitness-guru-ankle-flexibility-for-better-balance-and-sports/article_5451e3a4-ab01-11ec-b25d-f733ba813780.html

The magic of muscle and bone mass and brain health

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Lifting weights is key to retaining lean muscle mass and keeping your weight down.
Photo-Metro Creative Connection

Hands down, the biggest reason people hire a personal trainer is that they want to be stronger and healthier. To achieve that goal, throughout a lifetime, it is essential that we maintain a vigorous level of physical activity to not only age well and be healthy, but also to keep our bones strong.

Lifting weights, or resistance training, is the key to retaining lean muscle mass and keeping your weight down. Around the time you turn 30, you start to lose as much as 3% to 5% of muscle mass per decade. The rate of decline of an inactive 80-year-old could be as much as 30%.

In fact, the American College of Sports Medicine and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommend two or more days per week of moderate-to high-intensity resistance training, using all major muscle groups. Use it or lose is correct, as keeping your muscles strong and flexible after 30 prevents scarpenia, a condition characterized by loss of skeletal muscle mass and function. Scarpenia is a natural part of aging, but muscle loss is largely accelerated by inactivity. For many, as we get older, we tend to move less.

The ACSM’s Physical Activity & Bone Health position stand is a recommendation that adults maintain a relatively high level of weight-bearing physical activity, with no upper age limit. Activities like plyometrics—jumping jacks, for example—and high-intensity resistance training are beneficial ways to increase bone mass, as well as to preserve skeletal integrity and improving balance to prevent falls. Kids that are involved in gymnastics and sports that involve jumping, like soccer and basketball, have a great strength advantage in later life, as their bone mass is maintained into adulthood, the report notes.

The main concept of resistance training is to produce changes that result in various strength adaptations. The 80-year-old mentioned? One set of arm curls, to overload his or her biceps, can result in strength gains in the arm muscles lasting as long as a month! While my job as a trainer is to set up great programs for individuals, consider ways you can start to train, if you haven’t already, with a simple home setup, including weights, elastic bands, medicine balls, or a TRX.

Remember when?

There is good reason to stick with your routine. Physical activity is a powerful intervention to reduce anxiety and depression during a pandemic. Those of us who stayed or became active during pandemic lockdowns were less likely to experience subjective memory decline. A recent study in Preventative Medicine looked at the effect of physical activity on subjective memory decline before and during social distancing. One in three participants experienced feelings of memory decline when socially distanced, however the active participants did not.

Muscles knock back inflammation

Besides brain health, regular exercise promotes a healthy immune system. Muscles that you use doing squats, arm curls or running down a trail have an innate ability to reduce inflammation. Lately, scientists studied lab-grown engineered human muscles to examine the role of a pro-inflammatory molecule, interferon gamma, which breaks down muscle. Typically, chronic inflammatory diseases break down muscle. The lead author of the study, Zhaowei Chen, a postdoctoral researcher in biomedical engineering, found that when exercising, the muscle cells themselves are a powerful shield and can directly counter interferon gamma, the pro-inflammatory molecule, as well as protecting other tissues and cells.

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/features/fitness-guru/article_b2d26462-11af-11ec-b04a-23ef35ce0778.html

Your feet-why they need extra care

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When we walk, our feet and ankles absorb impact and force from above and the ground. Our feet need tender loving care because of this.

During this overwhelming pandemic, walking is like a lifeline. People are walking more than ever. You can use this time to improve your alignment and movement skills, starting with your feet.

When we walk, our feet and ankles absorb impact and force from above and the ground. Our feet need tender loving care because of this. Your feet have 52 bones and over 100 ligaments, with 40 muscles and tendons connecting the muscles to these bones. They all form the foundation of the human body. Having healthy feet and ankles means that they can keep your body balanced and can withstand the pressure of standing and moving. That pressure needs to be evenly distributed throughout the lower legs all the way up to the head.  

The average American walks 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day. When you walk, the pressure on your feet increases by 50 percent, and increases even more during an hour of strenuous exercise, cushioning up to one million pounds of pressure. If the feet and ankles are not functioning optimally, it could create some problems through the entire muscular system.

Other areas of the body will be affected as they shift further out of alignment to try to maintain balance.

Our gait affects the whole body, from the moment your heel hits the ground and your weight is transferred through a system of arches that displace forces. The muscles of your feet and lower leg react as our arches drop and roll with gait. The feet and ankle also must know how to adapt to changes in surfaces, like steps or uneven terrain. If your ankles don’t bend, for example, or your knees roll inward, called pronation, not only is your walking gait off kilter, but the knees, hips, lower and upper back can be affected because of musculoskeletal imbalances.

  1. How do they look?

Take a moment to look at your feet. Notice if your big toes have bunions or calluses, or if that toe has moved towards the other toes, rather than pointing straight ahead. Are your lesser toes curled up and flexed?These conditions are called hammer, claw or mallet toes. Are your arches collapsed? Are your feet turned outward as you stand? All of these checkpoints affect the position of the knee, so you can begin to understand the importance of distributing your weight evenly through your feet.

2. Golf and tennis ball roll.

Give your feet a home massage by rolling a golf ball under your foot for a few minutes every day. This exercise helps rejuvenate the plantar fascia, a broad dense tissue on the underside of your foot, where the muscles of you lower leg attach.

Place a golf ball under your foot, and roll the ball back and forth, until you feel tender or sore spots. Pause on the sore spots, until you feel the sore spot release. If the golf ball is too painful, use a tennis ball. You can also add an active stretch by pulling your toes up while rolling.

Do this myofascia release exercise as you sit watching TV, or by your bed to do first thing in the morning.

3. Toe Stretch.

After you golf or tennis ball roll, stretch the underside of your foot to increase the flexibility of your toes and ankle. Stand barefoot, one foot forward, with your toes pushed up against the wall. Keep the ball of your foot and base of the toes in contact with the floor. Slowly lean in, moving the knee inward. Hold for 10-15 seconds, and repeat.

Take at look at the exercises at

https://vimeo.com/user77012133/review/415371796/a971589693

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/features/fitness-guru/article_10c8774a-90b1-11ea-8d1c-3b262b6c1d24.html

The right way to train

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The best exercise programs don’t have to be complicated to be effective, but you need a plan. It’s not uncommon to see someone in a gym pick up a set of dumbbells, half heartily knock out a few biceps curls, and call it a day. When it comes to strength training, you need is a safe, simple and effective resistance-training program that you can perform at least twice a week.

At any age, strength training increases the amount of muscle and bone density. As we age, it helps boost our energy and vitality, and helps to prevent and treat chronic diseases as arthritis and osteoporosis. For men and women, strength training, or resistance training, helps you achieve a more toned appearance, and contributes to maintaining independence in performing activites of daily life. It improves your balance and coordination, and helps reduce your risk of falling. Strength training allows for a sense of pride, capability, and confidence for older adults. However, you want to ensure that your time in the gym is worthwhile and what you do in your time there transfers to your daily living. If there is one aspect of aging that you can control, it is strength training.

 Get with the free weights

If your workout consists of using only machines, you might want to consider adding free weights, or the suspension trainers. Research shows that functional strength increases over 57 percent in machine-trained individuals, compared to 115 percent in free-weight groups.

Functional training is a popular buzzword in fitness programs and is used to help design effective programs. The dictionary defines the word functional as “ of having activity, purpose, or task or, alternately, “ designed to be practical and useful, rather than attractive.” With regard to what you do in your workouts, functional training is all about positive transfer to your goals, which is the purpose of training, says Nick Tumminello, owner of Performance University, author and educational provider for fitness professionals worldwide.

Functional training is described as the ability to produce and maintain a balance between mobility and stability along a kinetic chain while carrying out fundamental patterns with accuracy and efficiency. Greater results are seen in movements taking place in three-dimensional spaces, which is where free weights come in. For example, you might step-up onto a step or bench holding weights, rather than simply use a seated leg machine for leg strength. Both exercises are valuable for enhanced performance, and each offer unique training benefits. However, training in a three-dimensional space, as in a box step-up exercise, is important because for one, you are standing up, which is what we do in life, and also involves mobility and stability, which contribute to good movement skills.

You want your workouts to include the basic movements that you do in daily life: squatting, lunging, pushing, pulling, and rotating.

Little tweaks and offset positions.

Repeatedly doing the same exercise the exact same way can place repetitive stress on the joints, muscle, and connective tissue.  In a squat, for example, try an offset staggered or a narrow stance in a set. (A set is a group of consecutive repetitions.)  By changing or tweaking the position of major joints like the hips and knees, you help dissipate stresses to the connective tissue. Changing hand positions in upper body exercises also helps reduce overuse injury to the shoulder joint.

Helping Aging Bodies.

If you’re over 50 and have unavoidable age-related changes, or chronic conditions, you can still gain skills so you don’t rely solely on exercise machines. Here are some fixes so you can do some great functional exercises:

Crunches. Put a pillow behind your head if your neck flexors are long and weak.

Push-ups. Instead of regular push-ups where you feel like you hunch your shoulders, or to avoid too much weight-bearing to already sore shoulders, lay flat on your stomach, with palms on the floor and elbows back. Press through your palms. Or do push-ups against a wall.

Plank. Elevate your shoulders higher than your toes by placing your forearms on a bench or chair.

Balance. Stand on one foot. Lift your other knee up towards your chest.  Open the leg using your thigh and knee, back a forth 8 times, like a windshield wiper, to challenge your center of gravity.

Keep your program safe and  simple to stay young and strong, your way.

https://www.mtexpress.com/wood_river_journal/valley_people/fitness-guru/article_fd243020-3e79-11e8-8d77-0beb68f12809.html

Slowing down aging with strength and grace

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3 generations living well!

3 generations living well!

“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”- Andy Rooney

Older adults need exercise training to improve their functional fitness that results in their independence, reduced falls, and a positive and profound impact on their mental and emotional health. Programs that involve strength, agility, dynamic balance, sensory enhancement and joint mobility ( think chest- up-confident stride ) all contribute to helping slow down the aging process.As we age, the size and quality of our muscles shrink at a loss of .5-1% per year. From the age of 60-80 years, the natural prevalence of muscle loss, or sarcopenia, jumps exponentially  from 15-32% for men , and 23- 36% for women. At 80, the values increase to about 51% -55% respectively for women and men.

Shrinking  muscles affect strength, power, endurance and speed.According to the US Center for Health Statistics, a person spends about 15% of their lifespan in an unhealthy state because of disability, injury or disease occurring in old age. The good news is that only one day a week of training will help you. A recent study of healthy women aged 60 years and older, showed that as little 1 day per week of aerobic activity and 1 day per week of resistance training may be just as good for improving strength,endurance, and quality of life as more frequent training. The study, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, sited significant  improvement of daily activities such as standing, sitting climbing stairs and walking. The majority of studies suggest that older less conditioned people adhere to training 2-3 times a week, with 48 recovery hours, performing 3 sets of 10-12 exercises.

Functional fitness involves dynamic balance, and it is not necessarily your fate to be the 1 of 3 people over 65 that suffer a bad fall. In younger people balance is largely an automatic reflex. A variety of movements, with practice, can make your legs stronger, ankles,hips and spine more flexible, and challenge the nervous system. Optimal balance requires information from both our body in space and our external environment. It also involves using all 360 degrees of thigh muscle, as these are the muscles that need to be strong. Try the following mobility and sensory-enhancement exercises adapted from Christian Thompson, PhD, associate professor in the department of exercise and sport science at the University of San Francisco:

1. Ankle Circles .
Stand tall with feet hip- width apart. Hold onto a stable object with one or two fingers only. Lift one leg off the floor slightly, in front of the body. Do 15 slow, clockwise ankle circles, moving your foot to the greatest degree possible. Repeat counter clockwise; switch legs. ( www.ideafit.com/ST-older-adults.com)

2. Rotating Head.
Stand with feet hip width apart while holding a shortened TRX Suspension strap in a single- handle mode, palm down, with arm partially extended at chest height. Repeatedly turn head fully from right to left at a brisk pace while keeping eyes fixed on anchor point.Try for 60 seconds. To progress exercise, march while turning head.

http://ketchumkeystone.com/2013/09/30/slowing-down-aging-with-strength-and-grace/PPriscilla Woods @ Huntsman World Senior Games

Preventing Tripping and Falling As You Age

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Falls can be traumatic after a certain age. My father passed away from complications from a fall, one of the most common causes of severe brain injury. He hit his head while helping my mother get groceries out of their car one morning. As tragic as my family’s loss, falls happens all too often in people over 65; The Center for Disease Control reports that 1 out of 3 people over 65 will suffer falls and that they are the leading cause of injury death. Twenty -30% percent of fallers suffer the inconvenience of hip, pelvis or spine fractures that not only make it harder for them to get around, but chips away at their self-confidence. Recent studies show that strength training alone is not enough to prevent falls and improve balance among the elderly. It certainly is important to retain muscle strength as you age, because in your 50’s your strength starts to decline at a rate of 12-15% per year. But could it be that older people trip and stumble more often or is it because they are less able to recover balance after a stumble or trip? Is it because their balance is off? In a study on the prevention of falling in older folks, The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research February 2011 stressed the importance of not only power and quadriceps strength, but balance training also.

Swing , sway and stand

A lot of factors, like falling history, muscle weakness, eyesight, number of medications, arthritis,fear of falling and home hazards all contribute to fitness decline and falls. During the actual fall, the study demonstrated that lack of lower leg strength predisposes them to fall. Their “swing phase “is off; their thighs aren’t strong enough to allow them to regain their balance. This means these older people end up taking too many small steps or arm reactions and end up tripping.

For a simple balance exercise try rising up on your toes, keeping your weight aligned over your big and second toe. This trains the sensory, or balance receptors in your ankle and foot. These muscles send out important sensory information to control standing balance. An exercise such as toe-raises, for example, trains the sensorimotor inputs, all providing valuable information about body position with respect to the supporting surface.

Stepping down off a small step is a good exercise as the study showed that the down phase of stepping in this age group is altered because of very tight ankle muscles. Stepping up onto a step is an example of a strengthening move to help strengthen the whole lower body. Although not a chipper subject, The Department of Health and Human Services recommends 4 preventative measures to avoid falls. 1. No matter how old you are, stay active 2.Make your home safer, by removing clutter from stairways and doorways, for example. Almost half of falls happen at home. 3.Have your doctor review your medications for side-effects. Some medications can make you light-headed or drowsy, which can lead to a fall.4.Have your eyes or eyeglasses checked. Poor vision can increase your risk of falling.

Connie Aronson is an American College of Sports Medicine Health and Fitness Specialist and IDEA Elite certified personal trainer. She is located at the YMCA in Ketchum, Idaho