In people over the age of 65 years, falls are the leading cause of death from injury and the sixth leading cause of death overall. Thirty percent of community-living elders and nearly 50% of institionalized elderly fall each year. Hip facture are one of the most disabling consequences of falling; hip and other factrues occur in about 5% of falls. Falls are classified as intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic factors include muscle weakness, decrease joint flexibility, impaired sensation, inpaired vision, cognitive impairment, and balance and gait abnormalities, including slower ambulation speeds. Extrinsic factors include poor nutrition, environmental hazards, multiple medication use, decrease financial resources, and lack of a social support system.
Balance is a crucial ability, especially as we age. Every year, over 300,000 people are admitted to the hospital for broken hips, most often due to falling. Hip fractures often lead to disability and loss of independence. To avoid becoming one of these statistic, add post-rehabilitation functional conditioning into your activities of daily living to improve the following areas in the digarm below.
Exercises to help condition the body for functional movements to meet the following criteria:
- They must include movements in all multiple planes (Sagital, frontal, oblique and transverse).
- They must properly condition the body’s nerves and muscles to develop muscle memory and help make movements “automatic.”
- They must condition for responding to external forces, allowing the body to make best use of outside influences such as gravity, ground reaction forces, and momentum.
Function is the “interaction between muscles, nerves, and joints, working together simultaneously to decelerate, accelerate, and stabilize both external and internal forces.” Function is the outcome of critical ADL’s (activity of daily living), job and sport demands. Everyday functional movements include running, biking, throwing, walking, carrying a child, tying shoelaces, getting out of bed, and even switching from a sitting to a standing position. Thus, the benefits of functional conditioning are not limited to athletics. Its movements occur in some form in work, home, and sport environments. To perform these tasks, a functional chain reaction involving muscles, nerves, and joints occurs. If this chain reaction is interrupted because of inadequate flexibility or lack of strength in part of the chain, a breakdown results, leading to a decrease in performance with activity of daily living and lead to possible injury.