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Easy exercises to keep you healthy and active as you age

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For many people, aches and pains have become a normal part of their life, especially as they age. However, it doesn’t matter if you’re 7 or 107, you can improve your pain. This includes general aches and stiffness from your daily life!

Here are some easy exercises and body care tips to keep you happy, healthy and moving beautifully through life!

Easy exercises for Healthy Aging

  • Walking
    • Walking is a great activity. Take note of how much you can walk at the moment and maybe a good goal would be to increase gently until you’re able to do 30minutes. Read our blog on Walking Program to help you.
    • Moving gets the blood flowing and joints lubricated. So not only should this movement help with any pain that you are already experiencing, but it will also help to prevent the onset of stiffness and pain!
  • Swimming
    • Now we have found people either love or avoid the water. If you are someone that used to love it and haven’t been for a while we’d really encourage you to have a try again.
    • The buoyancy of water takes the pressure off joints and some people find it to be great. Take note that if you haven’t been in the water for a while to take it easy the first time as it may feel easy at the time and aggravate your body later.
    • We often work with people who swim to keep their Shoulder range great so they can ‘just keep swimming!’

Full body assessment

  • Balance
    • Now this is key to good health! This tends to be best set with a Physio but if you’re confident you can try standing on one leg to see if you can balance for 30 seconds. If that is hard try standing with both feet on the ground and close together. If the one leg is too easy you can try closing your eyes (safety warning!)
    • We like to combine Balance work with other things as that is what is normal in the real world. An idea could be to stand on one leg while you’re brushing your teeth.

Women's physio brisbane services

  • Stairs
    • These are a winner if you can manage them. Great for your heart and muscles. If you only have a few at home you could do some step ups on the bottom one.
    • If you are having pain or problems with stairs make sure to book with your Physio
  • Deep breathing and muscle relaxation
    • If your muscles are tense it may be worthwhile to try muscle relaxation.
    • Deep Breathing Exercises;
      • Make yourself comfortable (lying down or sitting in a chair)
      • Loosen any tight clothing
      • Start to listen to your breathing in its natural pattern, without changing anything
      • Place your hand on your stomach, and start breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
      • Imagine that you are breathing down into your hands, letting your belly move in and out with your breaths
      • As you breathe out, imagine all your tight muscles are relaxing away all their tension
      • Continue for 2minutes.

If you are experiencing pain on a daily basis and can’t seem to find relief, make sure you seek help. You can always give your physiotherapist a call, if you don’t have one you can make an appointment with us, or book in to see your GP. A physio can help you work out your Easy exercises for Healthy Aging that suit you the best!

Preparing for your Physiotherapy Appointment

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If you’ve never had physiotherapy, or if you haven’t been in a while, it can be good to know what to expect and how best to prepare.

Appointment Preparation

Once you have decided on which Physiotherapist you’re going to go to, you can give the clinic a call or jump online and book an appointment through their website. When you’re on the phone some clinics will have a couple of questions for you about what the issue is, don’t be concerned about this your privacy is safe! It’s just to give the physiotherapist that will be seeing you an indication of what to expect when you walk in the door, and who might be best to help you.

 

The Barefoot Physiotherapy way

Now, at Barefoot Physiotherapy, we do things a little differently. After you have made your appointment at the clinic, the Physiotherapist who will be seeing you, will give you a call to check in with you and see what is going on in your body, and how best we can help you, along with answering any questions you may have, and making sure you know what to expect when you come into the clinic.

Session Preparation

A couple of days before your appointment, it would be a good idea to get some things together that you might need at your appointment. Things such as; private health insurance card, Medicare card, relevant scans of the injury, and any other relevant information about your injury or concerning area.

The Appointment

On the day it’s preferable to arrive at the clinic around 10-15mins prior to your appointment. This is to ensure you have enough time to find the clinic, find a parking spot, get into the clinic, and to fill out any required paperwork. Then, once in the session with the physiotherapist, tell them everything about your injury even if it may seem trivial to you, it may be the secret to unlocking your body! Overall, physiotherapy should be an enjoyable experience, where you walk out of the clinic feeling better and more knowledgeable about your body.

Top tips for keeping your body happy at work!

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Top tips for those who are sitting at their desk all day.

If you are an office worker chances are you have come across or experienced first hand the pains of sitting for too long. While a typical desk job may seem to expose the body to little physical strain, prolonged sitting can wreak havoc on the body. The reason for this is that we are meant to move. Our anatomy and biology is set up for us to walk, stand, squat, twist, pull, push and a whole lot more. As the saying goes, “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. In this case sitting all day causes us to lose our mobility. Muscles become tight and weak, our posture changes, and we become stiff and sore. To remove the risks of prolonged sitting check out our list of top tips you can do to maintain your mobility and move well regardless of the demands of your job.

  1. Perform an audit of your workstation setup

Often making a few changes to your workstation can cause you to form good posture without having to even think about it. Here’s some common faults and top tips for your workstation setup.

Common faults with workstation setup:

  • Chair too low → looking up at monitor
  • Monitor too low → looking down at monitor
  • Desk too low or seat too high → hunched over keyboard

Fix these with:

  • Chair at proper height → eyes are level with top of monitor
  • Hands comfortably at keyboard → shoulders are not rounded
  • Monitor at correct height → neck in neutral position

Want to learn more about how to setup your workstation? Click here.

 

Optimise your sitting posture:

often when we think about posture, it can seem overwhelming, often you are left with one question . . . What is the right way to position my body?

To ensure that the curves of the spine are maintained: roll your pelvis forward until you achieve a very slight curve in the lower back, sit up a little straighter through your mid/upper back, and check that the position of your head isn’t too far forward of back. It should feel nice and balanced over the rest of your body.

The next step is to get used to what being in this position feels like so you can adjust your position without thinking about it too much. After this you must form a habit of getting into and maintaining this position. To form a habit it is helpful to have habit triggers. Every time one of the following occurs hold your good posture for 5-6 deep breaths or until you forget about it:

  • You get an email
  • You answer or hang up the phone
  • You take a sip of water
  • You set your desktop background to a picture of someone with good posture and do what they do when you see it.
  • You set a reminder on your phone to notify you that its time to practice your posture habit.

Remember the most important point is that the body is made to MOVE. Even though we have outlined a perfect posture position above, remember that it’s always good to change positions often.

Regularly change your position throughout the day.

Been sitting for an hour? Why not stand for the next half hour? Or even kneel? The point is to do something different and to put your joints in a different position.

Don’t have this option? Get up go for a short walk to refill your water bottle, make a tea, go to the bathroom. You could even try marching on the spot, rolling your shoulders in circles, or doing a couple yoga moves. The takeaway from this is that there a million +1 ways to move your body and you must move it away from the position you have been spending a lot of time in.

Ideally change your position every 20-30 minutes but another useful technique is to listen to your body, i.e. is it starting to feel stiff? Are you starting to twist and move around in your seat to find a better position? If so, it’s time for a break. Get up and move or change your work position.

  1. Move often

 This can take the form of formal exercise, gardening, going for walks, anything really. If your body can handle regular movement/exercise it will develop better resilience to the strain that lengthy desk work can have on the body. Plus you’ll reap the numerous other health benefits of exercise.

  1. Get a thorough assessment from your physiotherapist

At Barefoot Physiotherapy, we assess your nerves, joints, muscles and movements to measure the amount of strain you have built up in your body. You do not need to have any symptoms or conditions to have this assessment; think about it like going to the dentist for a check-up to prevent something happening! If there is any strain building up in your body, we can help teach you how to reduce the strain and prevent it coming back again. Want to learn more or book an appointment? Click here. We hope you find these top tips useful.

Brain Overload

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Pete – touch footy, barramundi fishing and sirens blaring!

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Physio for paramedics

Pete Joseph loves a challenge. Whether it be side stepping on the touch footy field, barramundi fishing or saving lives. 

At Barefoot, we love to look after the people who look after us. Being a paramedic is taxing on your body. You need to put yourself into difficult situations physically and mentally. It’s important to have your outlets and for Pete Joseph, it’s touch footy & barramundi fishing. We were keen to hear more about this lifestyle that sounds like it’s out of an Adventure magazine!

You’ve just played for the NQ Touch Footy team at a State comp, but you live in Brisbane. How does that come about?

I’ve represented Cairns Pirates at the NQ championship whilst living in Cairns multiple times and due to this I was able to use my home grown status to tour with the team this year in June 2015. This is an avenue for players such as myself that have a passion for representing their home region.

Having grown up in cairns you can’t help but feel an emotional attachment to representing the region at any opportunity you can get. Not only do I get to play touch football with my mates I grew up with, but making it known to everyone that I’m a proud NQ boy and will always be. This is something most city slickers won’t ever understand. Cairns will always be known to me as my home and the connection with the region is something that will never fade. I suppose you can compare it to the same passion that Queensland supporters have during the state of origin series… Queenslander!!!!!

Physiotherapy touch football

We know you get asked about it all the time (because we all want to know about you guys in uniform!) but can you tell us about what made you decide to become a paramedic and what’s a usual day like?

I’m a bit biased, but being a paramedic is the best job in the world. I was an electrician but I wanted a bit more of a challenge and being a paramedic has certainly filled that void. Being a paramedic is rewarding and unique which makes the role so enjoyable.

And what’s a usual day like? It’s sometimes that’s hard to describe. There are no two days that are similar, not even close. We don’t have a usual day which is one of the reasons why I and other paramedics are attracted to the role. When we log on with our communications centre, the possibilities are endless. We could be simply talking amongst ourselves about the weekend sport when we receive a job that requires us to treat a patient that can be medically unwell or involved in a traumatic event. We never know what we will encounter or who we will meet, which is what makes it so interesting.

We hear that you love fishing in the NT. Tell us about your most memorable trip.

Fishing is my chance to completely relax. Being isolated with your mates catching HUGE Barramundi is hard to beat. I have heaps of great memories however catching your first fish [especially barramundi] of the trip always sticks in your mind. This photo was taken in Kununurra W.A which was our plan B location due to bad weather in the Northern Territory.

Fishing lifestyle Physiotherapy

Thanks Pete!

PS – Pete’s next focus for touch is to be representing the North Queensland Cyclones, March 2016 at the National Touch League Championship in Coffs Harbour.

 

If you have a demanding job that is hard on your body, why not book in with us for a ‘tune up’ – where we can check you over from time to time and treat anything that may come up.  This is a great way to keep your body at 100%  If you’d like to book in with us for a tune-up, CLICK HERE.