Walking for Wellbeing: Building Strength, Balance and Confidence

25 people attended the one hour Wellbeing Walk around the gardens which was interspersed with 8 strength/ balance exercises including heel raises, single leg stand, lunges, side leg lifts and even some silly dancing to keep things light!

The focus of the walk was to highlight the importance of these exercises, amongst others, in improving strength and balance baselines and resilience, and to reduce the risk of falls in later life. The narrative around each exercise explained how the exercise should be properly performed, how it should feel, how it related to activities of daily living, and it’s value; for example, side leg lift- ensuring the foot is in a fixed position, toes pointing at 12 o’clock, feeling it around the hip joint, building muscle strength around this joint is important for the ability to take a strong, reactive, compensatory step to correct balance when needed such as when the bus stops suddenly, also building muscle bulk around hip provides more protection around the joint in case of a fall.

At the end of the Wellbeing Walk, a Backward Chaining demonstration was included showing people how to get up from the fall in case of a fall.

There was lots of positive feedback at the end of the session with everyone saying how much they enjoyed the Strength and Balance Wellbeing Walk, in addition to finding it really informative and feeling like they’d done their bit too.