Can you get up and down from the floor? Easily? This is one of the most important things an older person needs to be able to do — get up and down. Most of us don’t particularly like the floor. It’s dirty. It’s hard. It’s got germs. But mostly, it’s difficult to get up and down from.
So you need to make friends with the floor. Get used to it. Get comfortable with it. Yes, you’ll need to make friends with that hard, flat surface, because, if you are exercising your body in ways that are good for Seniors, you will spend a great deal of time there.
Yes, I know, I’ve written about this before. A number of times, in fact. But it’s an important skill you need to be able to do — getting up and down from the floor.
I hear complaints all the time about how “I would do crunches and planks, but once I get down there, I can’t get back up”. If that’s an excuse, then I suggest you learn the easiest way and start doing it. It may be difficult at first, but the more you do it, the better you will be able to do it. That’s called “practice”.
Getting up and down from the floor is also a survival skill. If you fall and break a bone or have some other serious injury, you’ll need to be able to get up to some sort of “lifeline” to make contact with someone who can help. In these Winter months, even a light rain and a cold day can cause ice to form in ways where you can’t even see it. And after sundown or early morning, getting the mail or the morning paper can be a dangerous event.
And if you go to the beach in the Summer, how do you get down on your beach towel on the sand? More importantly, how do you get up?
There are many simple exercises that you do on the floor. I mentioned crunches, planks, and other excellent ground movements for Seniors that are excellent for your leg and hip mobility and flexibility. If you can’t get down and up from the floor, you won’t get the powerful benefits of them — particularly for Seniors.
Crawling movements are a great class of movement that requires getting down and up from the floor. Crawling movements are great for body awareness, as well as shoulder and arm strengtheners. Crawling on your hands and knees to start with and expanding to crawling with your knees not touching the floor (”bear” crawls or “cat” crawls) make great exercises. Try sitting on your butt, then lifting your butt off the floor and crawling “on your back” for a while (”Crab crawls”). These are bodyweight exercises that most seniors can do. Yes, it takes some time to build the infrastructure in your wrists and shoulders, but they make great exercises for Seniors. Plus, if you do fall, you can crawl to your phone or to the door to get help if you need it.
“Scrunching” crawls on your back or “floor crawls” on your stomach can be important in the event of low layer of smoke from a fire, or if you need to get from one point to another after an injury, and you can’t stand or even crawl.
There are any number of techniques to get up and down from the floor. The simplest way is to find a way to get to one knee and then lift yourself up from there with or without support. You are probably doing this already. It’s been proven that even Seniors in their nineties can increase leg strength (and size) though simple “partial squatting exercises” where you simply sit down and stand up from a basic straight-back chair. Give it a try.
The important thing is to NOT fear the floor. It’s not your enemy. Instead make the floor your friend and let it help you get the exercise you need.
Thank you for reading.