🖐️ Balance Tip: Imagine the Wet Paint Trick! Ever tried a balance exercise and found yourself holding onto something for dear life? Or just touching it to try to hold the position? Well, this could actually be preventing you from improving your balance 😮

Physios: Whenever prescribing balance rehabilitation exercises it's important to consider that context is a form of progression... ...and that anxiety affects not just performance, but motor learning

Perhaps the single most important concept when it comes to improving balance: 👉 Select variations of the movement skill you're trying to improve BUT the level of difficulty is such such that you DO NOT need use of your hands Exercises like this 👇👇👇 do not improve balance.

The quote "exercise is medicine" is often thrown around... but imagine if a pharmacist didn't have even a basic understanding of frequency, dose & types of medication? Luckily there's A LOT of readily available data on the relationship between rep ranges, 1RM%, & training load

If an older adult can only just stand up from a chair 5 times in a row? Then every time they stand up they're working at an intensity equivalent of you doing a heavy squat at 85-90% of your 1RM several times every single day 👉 Strength training is the key to independence

🚨 Partial squats do NOT help an older adult with getting up off a low chair or toilet 🚨 👉 To improve depth of sit-to-stand, progressively lower the height of the sit-to-stand while training in the strength training repetition range

The single most important question a rehab physio can ask before they prescribe an exercise: Does the movement directly contribute to the client's functional goals? 🤔 ❌ SLS will NOT help someone hang out washing ❌ Standing heel-toe will NOT help negotiating a kerb

If your balance & mobility rehab client isn't able to at least volitionally step in ALL directions AND cross-and-step? Then they have NO business doing activities like foam mats, wobble boards, or tapping balloons C'mon physios, we can do better

🚨 Partial squats do NOT help an older adult with getting up off a low chair or toilet 🚨 👉 To improve depth of sit-to-stand, progressively lower the height of the sit-to-stand while training in the strength training repetition range

🛑 Single-leg stand is a poor predictor of falls, as well as a poor exercise to reduce falls It's a good exercise to: ✅ Improve how long someone can stand on one leg if that's the specific goal, or ✅ It's part-practice / a skill progression for a more complex motor skill

Here's an exercise program for client's who want to improve their ability to walk and get rid of their walking frame 👇👇👇 (pity there is 0% relationship between these exercises and the mobility skills clients need to reach their functional goals)