Two Mobility Skills For Independence
What actions can you still perform that you did at 17? Run, jump, skip, easily lie down on the floor and rise from it? Can you hop on one foot? Or hop from one foot to the other? Or hop from two feet to one, and back to two? To retain your sense of independence, learn mobility skills.
Why is hopping important? It involves balance, stability, quickness, and the concept of “throwing your weight.” Anytime you have both feet in the air, you are throwing your entire weight. That takes effort. It tends to get harder as we get older.
Hopping develops ankle, leg, knee, and hip strength. If you have to jump out of the way of an oncoming car or a small child careening down an aisle, you will be glad you developed hopping skills. If you cannot put two feet in the air at the same time, shift back and forth on your feet, picking up one foot and balancing for several seconds.
Another skill involves lying on the floor, and rising. From a standing position, lie down, completely relax flat. Now, get up from that position. All kinds of skills are involved in getting off the floor: abdominal strength, coordination, a sense of stability, an ability to roll over to begin standing, leg and arm strength, and balance. We forget how to rise from the floor because we don’t practice. We are not getting old; we’re out of practice.
Why is rising from the floor important? Some day you will fall. You trip over an uneven piece of concrete, you catch your shoe on something, your ankle gives out. Falling is common. I don’t know anyone who has never fallen. Everyone falls, sometime. The trick is to be able to get up. If you fall in your house and can’t get to a phone, you can’t get help. If you trip over a pebble on the sidewalk and can’t get up, it will start to rain to make it even more miserable for you.
Learn to get off the floor, any way you can. Use core strength, arms, legs, chairs, poles, the edge of a table, or a friend, but do not stay on the floor. It is a skill to retain through aging.
That’s Aging Intelligently