Falling…

Today is part two of a little mini-series, and I’m kind of doing these backwards. Last week I taught you what to do to make sure you don’t get severely injured if and when you fall. But this week, you’re going to learn how to prevent falls from happening in the first place so falling is just NOT a concern.

Last week I told you the story of how I fell, hard, while I was kicking the ball around with my son after a soccer tournament.

That same day, I witnessed another fall.

Right behind us on the sidelines, one of the players on Calvin’s soccer team invited his grandma and grandpa to come watch. They were carrying their lawn chairs, and somehow grandma got tangled up, lost her balance, and started to fall - into grandpa. They both tipped over, and ended up on the ground. Everybody crowded around to help them back up.

Fortunately, I don’t think they were hurt, it was really cushy, soft grass, but they were certainly embarrassed.

They didn’t even look to be that old! Maybe in their mid-sixties. But falls like this happen a lot, and can be very damaging.

Some stats about falls

The stats say that every second of every day, an older adult (age 65+) suffers a fall in the U.S. I did the math for you = 86,400 falls are happening a day. That’s 31 million falls a year, and women are falling way more often than men.

• But most of these falls can be completely prevented. In fact, falls are NOT a normal part of aging!
• Technically, a fall happens when your body's center of gravity shifts beyond neutral, and then all of the systems that are supposed to kick in and pull you back - they either fail to detect in time and they’re just not quick enough and strong enough to pull you back.
• Essentially, you lack the balance, strength and reflexes throughout your body to correct the position of your body in that moment, and you go down.
• But each of these things can be trained and developed, so simple, everyday fall don’t happen.

Here’s the plan: What you can do to prevent falls from happening in the first place

• Improve your Balance - this obvious!
• Step one: Static balance - balancing on one foot, feeling your toes and feet grip the ground, allowing your ankle and shin and hip muscles work to keep you upright
• Do this: Practice standing on one foot with your other knee up (keeps core engaged)
• Step two: Dynamic balance - balancing while in motion, maintaining control and stability while you move,
• Do this: Practice single leg 3-way taps, first with a straight knee, then with small squats
• Do this: Practice single leg dead lifts, or hinging while balancing on one leg (use a kickstand if that’s too challenging)
• If your balance right now is awful and you’re super wobbly, do these moves next to a wall and just touch it lightly with your fingertips
• Improve your Coordination
• Coordination is essentially communication. It’s when your brain can tell one area of your body to do something while telling a different body part to do something else - like patting your head and rubbing your tummy. You’re communicating different signals at the same time.
• The most common one to think of is your right hand moving forward at the same time that your left leg does. Or, more invisible, your core muscles engaging a split-second before your leg lifts to stabilize your spine
• Why is this helpful? If you lack coordination, you will be more clumsy and more likely to fall
• Step one: work on getting your core to coordinate. Soooo important!
• Do this: Practice slow marches by exhaling to engage your core then lifting one knee
• Step two: get opposites to communicate
• Practice birddogs
• Improve your Strength & power
• Having stronger muscles and quicker reaction time matters so much for preventing falls.
• Story about the Blue Zones, an 100 year old man from Japan was showing off how strong he was, but not only that, how fast he was. He did a few karate style moves, like fast punches, and you could just tell that he had great strength and power
• Step one: If you’re not doing any strength training and muscle building work, start on your core first. This will have the most direct impact on preventing falls from happening. (Do my 5-Day Core Tune Up program).
• Step two: Once you have that going, start to add in some lower body strength training, like squats, and especially single leg strengthening exercises like step-ups
• Step three: Finally add some speed to it.

The good news is that your balance, coordination, strength and power can all be trained.

You can see dramatic improvements in these areas… it may take a little bit of time and might feel gradual, but it’s well worth it.

The result from being consistent with training these habits?

• Your chance of falling and then getting injured goes way down. You don’t have to be one of those terrible stats.

If you don’t follow these steps and work on this now?

• Well, you’re going to fall. You can’t predict when and where a fall will happen, but it will.

So let’s not let that happen.

Your call-to-action today is simple:

I want you to promise me that you’re going to do whatever you can to make your core strong. Balance work is great, but you’ll be significantly less wobbly if your core is solid. So if there’s nothing else you takeaway from this episode, just focus on building your core strength. Be sure to grab my 5-Day Core Tune Up for beginners if you need a good place to start.

More Resources & Links

FREE 5-Day Core Tune Up - A free mini-course to dramatically improve your functional core strength, create better alignment, and relieve back and hip pain for good!

Follow Megan on Instagram

‍