Question
How often should balance be practiced in the geriatric population?
Answer
Balance should be practiced on an everyday, if not multiple times per day occurrence, where individuals are intentionally challenging their balance for enhanced processing and reactivity. In addition, balance tasks should be very much like their real world counterparts. They should be in-motion as possible and practiced only when absolute necessary on a static environment, even if you just add the element of sitting to standing, adding a functional reach, etc., trying to make things as dynamic as possible. As a final point, with certainly no evidence to support this just yet, we need to be looking at this at a systematic and then a research basis. That is to say that truly to enhance patients’ capacity to perform better in balance, they need to be practicing an activity that is going to cause them some loss of balance. The suggestion here that is becoming a little more widespread and empirical, if not research supported just yet, is to have a sufficient balance stimulus. This is an exercise that causes an individual to lose their balance about 30% of the time, to make adjustments, take a step, make an ankle strategy, etc.
