Power to the People - How the Modern World Makes You Fall
Falls are the largest cause of A&E admission in the UK for older adults.
Falls that result in injury can have huge implications on people’s lives. This impact is physical and mental as fear of falling is a horrible thing to live with and a driver towards being less active.
Society on the whole isn’t exercising at the levels that give a good foundation for self-care which includes reducing fall risk with 34% of men and 42% of women not doing enough activity.
I want to share a type of strength training that gives rapid benefits that are fundamental to our daily safety and one of the best ways to help your body prevent falls.
"Power Prevents Falls"
The facts...
1. Not all strength is equal
Strength is a measure of the maximal force that can be created and usually takes 2-3 seconds to develop. Most falls are quicker than this.
Power is how quickly you can deploy your strength and quicker is better when it comes to avoiding falls.
2. Fear slows us down
When we are fearful of falling we consciously engage our brains more and try to plan where we put our feet, check for things to grab or safer places to fall and this in many ways makes us more likely to fall.
When we want the body to be able to react quickly to something that has lots of variables we want the body to lead not the mind.
Imagine trying to consciously control walking telling each different part of the body to move. Or how about walking down a slippy slope, thinking about where to put your feet, only to see someone run down it without falling.
The runner is letting their body do the slope whilst they relax, avoid obvious hazards and lean into it, they know over engaging the brain doesn’t help.
Fear makes us engage more of our conscious control of the body, confidence lets our body lead which is quicker and that’s what we want.
3. Age takes power quicker than strength
We are living longer as a society. As we age our body loses muscle mass this is called sarcopenia which starts from our 40’s and we’ve lost 50% of our strength by our 80’s. Well power is lost at an even greater rate and has far more use in our life, the term powerpenia has now entered the discussion and how you can prevent the loss, which is what penia means, is important and not as hard as you might think.
What can you do?
You get better at what you practice and we want to train the ability to move quickly under load because this is power training.
This has to start from where you are now and be safe, less haste more speed.
1. Every day activity
Getting up from a chair is a perfect place to start.
Move forwards on the chair and then drive up using the legs. If you have to start with help from the hands that’s fine but aim towards just the legs.
Too easy you think lower the seat or do it from the bottom step of your stairs.
Harder still, use one leg at a time.
This can be made into a really challenging exercise and once you feel confident doing it make it faster and harder and repeat it more times in a row.
Don’t stop at just this exercise how about using your body weight to squat down then back up as fast as you can. Same going onto tiptoes. If too easy do it on one leg or put a rucksack on and stick a load of books in or hold a weight.
Example of sit to stand with focus on using the legs
2. Doing dissolves fear
Fear of falling is real as are the consequences. A great way to manage the fear is to build confidence in your body by doing things that improve your power.
“Switching on the brain”, which is what we are doing when trying to avoid falling tends to light up the fear system so it’s key that you do your power training with intensity but not fear.
Start where you are and build confidence in the movement, then really push the speed but you want to feel in control rather than out of it.
Knowing that these fast powerful movements are training your body specifically to react quickly is a big confidence booster.
Exercise this increased confidence around your house first then onto more challenging environments from there rather than doing this for a few weeks then thinking you are immune to falls.
3. The best time to start is now
You’re not getting any younger and as mentioned once you’re into your 40’s your muscles are naturally decreasing with power leading the way.
You can get stronger at any age, ANY AGE so the best time to start is now as it will be harder tomorrow.
Even if you’re in your 20’s or 30’s consider it as building the habit of a lifetime. I like to think of it like a savings account the more you put into it the safer you are as you have a surplus to handle your life and you’re building a habit that is likely to last well past your 40’s.
The older you get the stronger the argument to consider your muscles as the most important organ in your body and give them what they thrive on, challenge.
