In the rehabilitation and occupational therapy field, therapists devise exercises and techniques for helping people suffering from severe injuries to "relearn" how to move, so they can go back to daily living without any limitation or fear. Some of the exercises used are everyday tasks that the patient needs to practice and be shown how to do while the brain reconnects the pathways for creating movement. There is obviously a loss of muscular strength, but the loss of neurological connection with movement is more significant and exercises that target this have a greater effect on strength than the strength training itself. For older adults or seniors, this is also very true and real. Their poor balance, strength, mobility and co-ordination can be significantly enhanced from learning complex movements and tasks that mimic everyday activities, as opposed to simple strength training exercises with a single focus of building muscle. Walking and machine based exercise will have no effect on learning to move with skill and co ordination. In this article I am going to show you how to use exercises we use in our Stronger For Longer Older Adults program, to enhance movement skills with Older adults and you will see videos of real clients performing these drills and exercises. The Fitness industry must recognize that the population is getting older and sicker, and it is up to us to show these people how to prevent many of the unnecessary health problems via a well designed Health & Fitness program.
What Are Active Daily Living Exercises?
Well the picture above would be quite a tiring exercise, even for people aged in their 20's. This is not one of the exercises we use however but the principles are very much the same. These exercises look amazingly creative but if you take a look at any sports specific training program these days you will find many exercises almost doing the same thing. And why? Because in the sporting arena we know that the more specific the conditioning is to the sport, the greater the carryover effect of muscular timing and skill will be. The same is true for older adults needing to learn how to walk up stairs better, bend over to pick up their car keys on the floor or a golf ball on the green or lifting a washing basket up onto a bench. These are everyday movements that you lose if you become inactive and no longer provide the body with stimulus to effectively construct the movement. With loss of movement, comes loss of muscle mass, and other skills such as balance, agility and speed are lost equally as fast, if not faster. This is when these simple tasks now become rigorous exercises! To get them back you need complex exercises that utilize these lost skills.
Scientific research and our 10 years of experience have shown that restructuring the brain and nervous system requires the use of complex movement patterns. As mentioned earlier simple gym exercises which is what most older clients are told to do, or walking will have little to no effect on changing the way you move. For you to get good at an activity, you MUST practice the kinetic movement chain on which that activity depends. Once you do this all of the structures in your cerebral cortex, midbrain, spinal column and nervous system in your arms and legs are rewired to make the movement easier to perform.
To learn more about this I suggest reading the book "Bending The Aging Curve" by Joseph F. Signorile which is where I first saw some of these exercises being used and allowed us to create similar ones in our Stronger For Longer program.
Let's Take A Look At Two Exercises We Have Used Very Effectively In Our Program
Broomstick Hockey
This exercise develops the motor pattern and skills needed for vacuuming and sweeping. In the video you will see me sweeping some leaves outside our studio and on the other side one of our clients performing a task of moving a medicine ball between some cones. The major difference though is that the client was having to sweep a 9kg Medicine ball as quickly as possible. Whereas I on the other hand only had to sweep leaves, that don't weigh much in comparison to the medicine ball and at a normal pace instead of fast. This means that the ability I need is less than the requirements of the exercise. In the exercise skills such as balance, co-ordination, strength to move the ball plus speed to complete it quickly are all required. And to do it better than the last time the client must learn how to improve all of these skills. Comparing that to the daily activity of sweeping, it is a massive step down in skill required leaving the task of sweeping to now seem insignificant to the exercise. My body has now learned a higher level of moving making life activity simple. I have basically upgraded my body's computer, the nervous system to the latest model. In the sports conditioning world we use exercises like the cable woodchop and multi direction lunge to enhance movement for sports like hockey, basketball and tennis.
Ball On The Cone Drill
This exercise develops the skills needed for picking something up off the floor. This ADL requires a significant greater amount of complex fine motor skills with the fingers and hands to be able to balance the tennis ball perfectly on the cone. However the automatic skill of the legs and the core to provide a solid and stable body, to complete the complex task is arguably harder. This task requires greater amount of strength in the legs, combined with balance and a different movement patterns of lunging and bending which are two of the most difficult patterns for older people or injured people for that matter to perform. As the person improves we make them pick up a coin from the floor requiring deeper range of motion for the legs that now will need more flexibility as much as strength plus an even finer motor skill with the fingers to pick up the coin.
How Do You Teach These Movements To Become Easier & Perfect?
Quite simply you need to understand two things.
1. What are the movement patterns needed?
2. What are the necessary skills to complete this activity.
Then it is a process of breaking them apart to teach each of the components separately so that the person has a higher level of either skill or movement. If it is a flexibility problem preventing them from lunging correctly you will need a flexibility program designed to loosen the tight areas. However we often find if there is something tight there is also something weak so only stretching will not help the person who cannot lunge. This means we now need to strengthen. Using isolated exercises first and then teaching the person how to integrate with multiple joints in a standing position last. If the problem is with balance then it will require some new stimulus to enhance their skills. To help explain this let's show you how we break down the Ball On The Cone Drill
Movement Patterns Needed = Lunge & Bend
Bio-Motor Ability or Skills Needed = Balance, Strength, Co-Ordination & Flexibility
Stretches Required To Enhance The Lunge & also Bending
There is a lot more to this than what I will show you here but this will give you an idea of the process. You will find the main culprit is the hips. The tight hip flexors significantly inhibit the ability to lunge correctly pulling the body into a flexed position. To understand this better I suggest reading our article "How To Loosen Tight Hips" and if you have back pain from bending over I suggest downloading our Free Report on Lower Back Pain by clicking here. It is important to always assess flexibility imbalances first before trying to strengthen weak muscles. This is a big mistake made by many personal trainers and exercise physiologists who are go straight to strength training. Tight muscles inhibit weak muscles by "stealing" the nervous system information for various movements. The only way to stop this is to weaken these tight muscles also known as Tonic Muscles by using stretching or massage. Only then can you truly develop strength in the weak areas. If you want to know more about this you can read this article "Stretching What, When, How & Why"
Strengthen Weak Muscles In Isolation To Improve The Lunge & Bend
Again there is a lot more exercises to this than I will show you but these are the main ones. This same method is a big part of our Knee Pain program that we have used effectively for a long time. The main exercises to use are for the weak gluteul muscles that provide all of the power to move you and also the abdominal muscles that provide the stability of the pelvis. Below are some of the best exercises for doing this. Again if you want to know more about strengthening your butt muscles, then read this article "How To Strengthen Your Glutes". The first exercise is an isolated exercise called the Clam for the butt. The second exercise is a lower abdominal exercise for the stabilizers of the pelvis and the third exercise is the bridge that combines the glutes, hamstrings and abdominal muscles into one movement similar to a squat.
Improve Balance & Co-Ordination For The Lunge
The lunge is often very difficult for the Senior as they have lost a significant amount of balance and have shortened their stance in order to provide more stability. This shortening of the stance comes at a huge cost when they need to be on their toes with the back foot as you are in the lunge. We use various exercises to improve this but some of the best ones are using movements with the Eyes Shut as seen in picture 3. Or on equipment that forces them to recruit new abilities. Below is two key exercises we would use to do this like the BOSU or Balance Boards to force change. This is not strength training, but more movement skills and developing abilities to improve their balance. They must be challenged with something they cannot do in order to enhance their skill.
Integrate The Movement
Lastly this is where we must put all of the separate components together into one movement. Although the stretches and individual exercises are helping to get to a point where the lunge or bending movement is easier, they still do not teach your brain how to move. It is very important to understand this. In many cases we have significantly improved a person's strength from just teaching them movement skills! Using tools to assist us is a critical point here and things like sticks, video feedback, technique tips between sets and using stretches prior to completing the movement all add up to enhance their ability to move. By far the hardest part of the process but once the lunge on it's own and the bend on it's own has been developed to a point of perfect it is easy to combine into the Ball On The Cone Drill. Watch the 2 videos below of how to do the lunge and the bending movement. The bending movement I show you myself lifting some firewood into the back of my ute. This gives a great visual of how easily someone can hurt their back when bending poorly.
Here Is Proof Of Results
If you have read all of this and still think I am full of it, well watch the video below of a client of ours who is now 78 years old and still going strong. He is in better shape at 78 than he was at 70! In this short video we give you a sneak peak at his 60 minute strength training workout where he completes many advanced Functional Strength Training exercises with barbells on his back and dumbbells. And he does this with ease!
Download Our Free Reports
Our latest Functional Training Free Report which is actually one of the Chapters from our Little Black Book of Training Secrets and the Stronger For Longer report are 2 of the best books we have ever created explaining the value of simply learning how to move correctly. And as we discussed in this article it is just so important for the Older adults or Seniors to continue to keep working on these skills and never lose them. Click here to go to our Free Reports page or on the images below.
Conclusion
This is quite a lengthy article and shows you just how involved our Stronger For Longer program is and why it gets results with EVERY CLIENT! We have yet to have a client who has not improved significantly using this process. We have spent years developing our injury prevention and rehabilitation programs using this exact method and now we are taking it to the specific needs of the Older Adult to improve their ability to move for life. If you live in the Melbourne area and would like to know more fill in the form below and I will get back to you within 24 hours to arrange a Free Assessment. If you live overseas make sure you check out all of our Free Reports and our very popular Knee Pain program that has helped hundreds of people all over the world.
