Toe Raise
1. Stand with your shoulders over your hips, hips over your knees, knees over your ankles.
2. Focus your eyes on a spot on the ground 25 degrees in front of you.
3. While you stay focused on the spot, raise up onto your toes using the whole surface of your foot.
4. Lift the weight off your heels and ball of your foot onto our toes.
5. Move slowly and in a controlled way without jerking from side to side. Repeat 10 to 15 times.
6. If you need some support doing this exercise, stand behind a chair and use your fingertips to balance yourself.
Hip Flexors
1. Stand next to a sturdy surface like a chair. If you need to use your fingertips for balance, do so.
2. Raise one leg off the floor as if you are marching slowly, then lower it.
3. Do not bend forward at the waist (engage your core). Repeat 10 to 15 times on each leg.
4. Make this more difficult by removing your fingertips from the chair (if you are using it) and even more difficult by closing your eyes.
Walk the Line
1. Choose a straight line in front of you like a tile floor and walk, one foot directly in front of the other, along it. Try this first with your arms extended out to the side for balance, and then with your arms at your sides.
2. Walk backward to the starting point, still along the straight line.
3. When this is easy, do it with your eyes closed.
Check out the rest of our 10-Week Workout, designed by Dr. Wright, including our sections on aerobic, load-carrying, and flexibility exercises.
Excerpted from FITNESS AFTER 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age
by Vonda Wright, M.D., with Ruth Winter, M.S.
© 2009 Vonda Wright and Ruth Winter
Published by AMACOM Books
www.amacombooks.org
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