Don't Just Shuffle Along: Five Stretch, Strength, and Agility Exercises to Help Lift Your Feet While You Walk

You may have had the experience of going on a walk then unexpectedly catching your foot on a rise in the sidewalk. Sometimes people trip because of shuffling: dragging their feet while they walk. Some reasons for shuffling include stiff ankles, problems with balance, and arthritis or joint stiffness that makes it difficult to raise the knees. Try out these stretch, strengthening, and agility exercises. Then enjoy your stroll!

Upper and Lower Calf Stretches

Stiff calves make it difficult to lift the toes as one steps. 

Upper Calf Stretch.

Stand about three feet from a wall and put your right foot behind you. Point your toes forward. Keep your heel on the ground and lean forward with your right knee straight. Hold this stretch for 30 to 60 seconds. Repeat on the other leg.

Lower Calf Stretch.

Stand away from a wall and put your right foot behind you and place your left toe about six inches before the wall. Lean forward at the ankle while bending the left knee. Hold this stretch for 30 to 60 seconds. Repeat on the other leg.

Seated toe raise

To lift your toes while you walk you need to increase the strength in the muscles of your feet. Here’s a simple exercise to strengthen those muscles.

Sit on the edge of a sturdy chair with your knees at right angles and your feet flat on the floor. Sit up straight with your shoulders back. Keeping your heels on the floor, raise your toes up off the ground as far as you can. Hold the position for three seconds, then slowly lower. Repeat 20 to 30 times.

Step to balance

Now that your ankles are stretched and the muscles of your feet are strong, you want to make sure you are lifting your feet by raising your knees while keeping well balanced.

Stand in front of a step or a box and step up onto it with one leg. Move the opposite hip and knee into a flexed position and hold for a few seconds. Move the lifted leg back down to the ground and follow with the balance leg. Alternate steps.

Cariocas

You can do this exercise without a ladder.

A key aspect of risk free walking is to move with good agility in different directions. The Carioca exercise helps you move sideways while rotating your hips. You’ll need at least 15 feet to effectively do this exercise.

Standing with your feet shoulder-width apart (the starting position), push off with the left foot and bring it towards the right foot. Cross the left foot behind the right foot and plant it on the ground. Move the right foot laterally. Cross the left foot in front of the right foot and plant it on the ground. Move the right foot laterally so you return to the starting position. Reverse the steps to perform this drill while moving to the left. 

Ten Philosophical Fitness Quotes

Given a choice, a lot of us would rather exert our minds over a good book than exert our bodies over a set of dumbbells. Great philosophers over several millennia, however, have encouraged the development of both mind and body. Whether it’s to start or to keep going on a fitness program, may you find inspiration from these quotes by great minds.

1. The immortal gods have made it so: To achieve excellence, we first must sweat. 

   Hesiod, 700 B.C.E.

2. Besides, it is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of person you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. But you cannot see that, if you are careless; for it will not come of its own accord.

   Socrates (469–399 B.C.E.)

3. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is a matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health. 

   Socrates

4. Excessive emphasis on athletics produces an excessively uncivilized type, while a purely literary training leaves men indecently soft. 

   Plato (428-348 B.C.E.)

5. In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, a person can attain perfection. 

   Plato

6. As for athletic training, we assert that it is a form of wisdom. 

   Philostratus, 220 A.D.

7. It is not a mind, it is not a body that we are training; it is a man, and he ought not to be divided into two parts. 

   Michel Montaigne (1533-1592)

8. A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this world. 

   John Lock, 1693.

9. Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather shall be little regarded. If the body is feeble, the mind will not be strong. 

   Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826).

10. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move my thoughts begin to flow. 

    Henry David Thoreau, 1851

Here’s a bonus quote from a modern writer: 

We like our minds to be knowledgeable, well stocked with information; we should also want our bodies to be similarly endowed. The erudite body is a good body to have. 

Colin McGinn, Sport, 2008.

Eight Great Reasons to Engage in Resistance Training

When you walk into the gym, you often see all the cardio machines taken up. Fewer people, however, are working out at the dumbbell rack or weight machines. Those cardio-heads are missing out. Cardio is important, but to maximize the benefits of exercise, make resistance exercise the foundation of your workout. Resistance exercise includes free weights, body weight exercises, machines, and bands.  

Here are eight great reasons to engage in resistance training.

1. Improves functional performance as we age.

Resistance training by older adults enhances movement control, functional abilities, physical performance, and walking speed. Resistance training reduces low back pain, arthritic discomfort, and pain associated with fibromyalgia. Resistance training reverses the debilitating effects associated with inactive aging, even in elderly individuals. 

2. Prevents injuries

People who engage in resistance exercise fall less, fracture bones less often, and strain their muscles less often during sports.

3. Builds a stronger, more resilient body

Resistance exercise increases bone density and muscle mass. Resistance exercise improves joint stability, balance, and coordination.

4. Decreases risk of disease

Resistance exercise prevents osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Resistance exercise improves insulin sensitivity and prevents insulin resistance. It decreases high blood pressure and reduces the risk of hypertension. Resistance exercise reduces the risk of type II diabetes, heart disease and heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.

5. Improves brain health and mental health

Resistance training for adults reduces symptoms in people with fatigue, anxiety, and depression; improves cognitive abilities in older adults; and improves self-esteem. 

6. Improves sexual health

Resistance training increases testosterone, increases libido, improves sexual satisfaction, and decreases the risk of erectile dysfunction.

7. Improves quality of life

People who engage in resistance exercise report greater life satisfaction and happiness. They sleep longer and more deeply. They age more slowly and are less likely to die prematurely. They report increased daily energy and reduced fatigue.

8. Improves physique

You can see this yourself. People who engage in resistance exercises have better defined muscles and more upright posture. Since resistance exercise supports fat loss, they have flatter stomachs and firmer rear ends. They carry themselves with more confidence.

By all means do cardio, but don’t sell yourself short. Resistance exercise is the closest thing we have to the fountain of youth.

For your shoulders, don’t do that, do this.

Over time, the tendons of your shoulders start to wear down. It’s usually a combination of things: spending hours every day hunched over the computer, bench pressing weights that are too heavy, just getting older, which results in your tendons become less flexible.

You can make these problems worse if you do the wrong kinds of exercises. If you’re beyond forty and feel discomfort in your shoulders, don’t lift overhead. The worst exercises are the ones where you press the weight from behind your neck.

For your shoulders, don't lift overhead. It's even worse when you press the barbell from behind your neck, like this guy.

When you press the barbell behind your neck, your shoulders externally rotate, causing the tendons to rub against the bones in the shoulder. Even lifting the weights in front of your head, though not as bad as behind the neck, can make your shoulders ache.

What to do? The trick is to work out the shoulder muscles without externally rotating the shoulders. A terrific exercise is the Scaption.

Preparation

1. Hold the dumbbells at your side, with palms facing the side of your body.

2. Contract your glutes, draw in your navel, and retract and lower your shoulder blades.

Movement

1. Raise both arms, thumbs up, at a 45-degree angle in front of the body, until your arms are parallel to the floor.

2. Slowly return your arms back to the side of your body and repeat.

Give scaptions a try. Your shoulders will thank you.