The personal training gym is not only for younger people. Our gym has stations where you have your own space for training. You would love it if you want to workout where there are not many people.
Lower body exercises -single leg-
We have been working on lunges and step ups. We gradually add intensity and her knee and ankle are fine. However, it was and it is very challenging for her to do single leg exercises.
For lunges, we started with supported using TRX, and use a square block under her back leg where knee goes towards to the ground, so she learned how low her knee should be.
Step ups are even more difficult for her especially for her bad knee. Yet is this not only for single leg strength training, but also this is for part of fall prevention. We focus on going up phase as well as down phase with control movement.
Postural exercises
She doesn’t have bad posture at all or isn’t inflexible. So I want to keep her body, functional as it is. We do some t-spine mobility exercise at the begging of our sessions and some static stretch at the end.
Core training
She needs to improve her core strength for sure. Since she is senior, I am very careful doing isometric hold training. I encourage her to breath during any exercises but especially while performing plank. In order to do so, we add some movement on plank such alternate knee tuck. She can’t do plank on the ground yet but with elevated surface.
We work on her lower back by birddog. She still struggles with maintaining her body position but guide her better hand position, importance of core engagement. They seem to work for her. I also tell her to do it slow and hold the position for 2 – 3 seconds when her leg and arm are up, otherwise killing the purpose of doing birddog.
Fall prevention exercise
Beside step up and other balance exercises, we started to work on ladder drill for her hand leg coordination. It doesn’t need to be too complicated movement. We start with right leg first forward, then left leg follows the right leg and then backward.
She struggles with hand leg coordination the most. I do it together with her as I count 1 to 4, she is still working on this to get better.