HELP! I’ve fallen and can’t get up!

Hearing that often brings a round of laughter or a snicker or a smile but not to be taken seriously.

However, what if that someone is your own grandparent or an adult senior that you know? Falling is a real danger for seniors so training for fall prevention is an excellent option and a real thing.

For Seniors, 95% of hip fractures are caused by falls. And one in five hip fracture patients die within a year of the injury. This is a major concern for many senior adults as they age. Besides the possibility of death from a fall, there can be many other health complications. Therefore, a senior fitness trainer is in a great position to help prevent falls. How, you ask? Here are two areas that I focus on for fall prevention in the senior client. One is balance training and the other is reflexive training.

Balance training sharpens a senior client’s sense of balance by moving from a stable environment to an unstable environment. In this case, that means moving from two feet on the floor to one foot on the floor. Think about it. That is what you do when you walk. You pick one foot up off the floor and temporarily balancing on the other foot while moving in a direction. There are many exercises to safely train the senior client’s balance.

In reflexive training the body learns to respond quickly to get senior client’s base of support, the legs, back underneath the body so they do not fall. We train the senior client in such a way that the actions of the legs are more like a reflex, which implies they don’t have to think about moving their legs.

For more detail, look inside the NationalPTI Senior Fitness CEU. Check it out.