Transcription
The five best proprioceptive exercises to improve your balance.
[Music]
Proprioception is the awareness of where your body is in space. It's the awareness of where your arms and legs are without looking. When you're born, you don't have a good sense of where your arms and legs are in space, but through challenging your balance, through learning to walk, through playing, through doing sports, we improve our proprioception and our balance. My name is Doug. I've worked as a physical therapist for 30 years, and I help people regain their ability to walk and balance.
Proprioception is a common problem in seniors, a lot of times because they're not practicing challenging their balance or their proprioception. It gets worse over time. I use these five exercises every day to help people improve their proprioception and their balance.
The first exercise is walking Heel To Toe. Now, to do this exercise safely, you're going to need something next to you like a countertop or a sink or the back of a couch or a chair. With one hand on that, you want to practice walking Heel To Toe. It's just like you're walking on a tightrope. You want to put one foot in front of the other with your heel touching your toe. Take two to three steps in one direction and then turn around and take two to three steps in the other direction. You only want to do a few steps because you don't want to get away from what you're holding on to. You want to be able to hold on at all times. As you get better, you can start to let go, but you always want something there just in case you lose your balance.
The next exercise is to practice walking backward. Again, you want something next to you like a countertop. Up to be there just in case you lose your balance. You want to take a few steps in one direction, turn around, and then go a few steps in the other direction. You want to go back and forth as many times as you can. Now, as you get better, you can start letting go and doing this without holding on.
The third exercise is called single leg stands. That's when you stand on one leg without holding on to anything. Now, to do this, you want something sturdy in front of you like a sink or a countertop. Holding on, you want to shift your weight over to the leg that you're standing on and then try to let go, balancing all your weight without holding on. At first, you might find that you can only do a few seconds or maybe just one second before you have to grab on. Don't give up. You usually have to practice this hundreds of times before you'll see an improvement, but your goal is to try to do this for 20 seconds on each leg.
The third exercise is to step sideways over something. Now, I'm using a foam roll in my example, but you can use anything. It could be a line on the ground, it could be a rolled up towel, but you want to practice stepping over it with both legs and then stepping back over the other direction. Of course, you want to have something in front of you like a countertop or sink to hold on to when you first start to practice this exercise, but the goal is to do this exercise without holding on, stepping over to the right and then back over to the left.
The last exercise is toe raises. To do a toe raise, you're going to raise up on top of your tippy toes while you're holding on to something. You can hold on to a countertop or the back of a chair and raise up and down. Now, this is more of a strengthening exercise, so you want to do 10 reps and then rest, and then 10 more reps and rest. Try to do three sets of ten, raising up and down on your toes. You want to do the exercise slowly to get the most benefit.
For all of these exercises, you want to try to do this once a day. It may take a few weeks or even a few months, but you can get better at these and improve your proprioception, improve your awareness of where your arms and legs are in space, and also improve your balance.
If you like this video, please like my channel to see more videos like this. And if you look in the description, I have links to other videos that might be helpful. Thank you.