Exercise to Improve Balance

Exercise is one of the most important things you can do to reduce your risk of a fall. Weight bearing exercise (eg. walking , dancing, climbing stairs) will increase your bone density and thereby decrease the risk of a fracture if you do happen to fall. More importantly, exercise will allow you to strengthen muscles and tendons. This in turn will help you to keep your balance.

Add up your activities:

• start where you can and progressively build up – listen to your body
• accumulate 30 to 60 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week
• minutes count – add it up, aim for 10 minutes of activity at a time (Canada’s Physical Activity Guide for Older Adults)

Check out the following other sources of information to get started:

• Canada’s Physical Activity Guide to Healthy Active Living for Older Adults
• My Turn, My Time