Fall Prevention & Balance Strengthening Exercise for Seniors - Heal Walking

Today our 4 Ever Fit Senior Fall Prevention and Strengthening Movement is Heal walking.  At 4 Ever Fit one of our goals is to provide you with simple functional activities, movements, or exercises that will improve how your muscular system and body operates.  This week is a simple movement called heal walking which will help you stimulate some underutilized muscles in your lower legs, and feet. Performing this exercise daily will help you balance better, move better and can help in fall prevention.

I often get asked what is the proper way to walk, run, sleep, lift weights, eat, etc.  These are not simple answers, and in normal everyday life we don’t want to walk on our heels, but this exercise is so simple and incredibly beneficial to lower leg and foot strength for fall prevention.  As humans age their neuromuscular system begins deteriorating after the age of 25.  Very slowly at first but increasing significantly as person moves through their 70’s and 80’s.  The part of the body which has the most neurological reduction is farthest from the spinal cord.  You guessed correctly.  The feet.

The feet tend to be reactionary body parts.  At times in life, we think about best practices for foot function, but generally speaking we just move and let the feet do what they want to do.  Thus, when our system begins to perform inefficiently our strong muscles continue to work very well and our weaker muscles continue to weaken eventually leading to more and more disfunction.

Heal walking is very simple to do.  Watch our video for tips on how to perform the heal walking balance and fall prevention strengthening exercise.