Add three short balance sessions to your week, starting this week. About ten minutes of single-leg stands, heel-to-toe walking and sit-to-stands is enough to begin.
The evidence is strong. A 2019 Cochrane review’s main falls analysis pooled 59 randomized trials with 12,981 people aged sixty and over living in the community.
Exercise cut the rate of falls by 23 percent overall. Programs built mainly on balance and functional exercise reduced it by 24 percent, with high certainty.
Programs that mixed several types of exercise, commonly balance plus resistance training, probably reduced falls by 34 percent, with moderate certainty. Tai chi may reduce them by 19 percent, with low-certainty evidence.
Balance declines with age, just as strength does. Starting in your fifties gives you years of practice before falls become common.
Falls are also where bone density stops being abstract. About 95 percent of hip fractures follow a fall, and this move works on the fall.
Be clear about who was studied. The trials enrolled people sixty and older, average age seventy-six, so in your fifties you are building the habit ahead of the evidence.
Here is the move. Three times a week, stand on one leg next to a kitchen counter and work up to thirty seconds per side, three rounds each, holding the counter at first if you need to.
Then walk heel-to-toe along a wall for ten steps, three times. Finish with ten slow sit-to-stands from a sturdy chair, using your hands at first and dropping them as you get stronger.
When thirty seconds feels easy, make it harder, one change at a time. Stand on a folded towel, turn your head slowly side to side, or close your eyes, and expect much shorter holds with your eyes closed.
Keep lifting alongside the balance work. Mixed programs had the largest average effect, though that estimate is less precise than the one for balance work alone.
If you have dizziness, a recent fall, osteoporosis, a past fracture or a condition that affects balance, ask your doctor or a physical therapist before you start. Keep a hand near the counter, use a chair that cannot roll, and stop if you feel pain or dizziness.
Ten minutes, three times a week, is the start. The programs with the biggest effects built up to about three hours of exercise a week, so add time as the moves get easier.
