Best senior posture exercises

The best senior posture exercises are behind you, literally. In your youth you were more concerned with the ‘mirror’ muscles, or the muscles you can easily see. These are the shoulders, chest, abs, legs, all the muscles in the front of your body. However, to improve your posture you’ll need to work on the opposite side of your body to stand up straight and tall.

The primary muscle groups you should be targeting are the: upper back, lower back, glutes/hips, and calves. These are all muscles that extend the spine, or help you stand up straight. The primary function of the glutes, for example, are the extend your hip. In layman’s terms, this means the glutes are designed to help you stand up straight from the hip. If your glutes have gotten flabby and are sagging more than they used to, this should be a wake-up call to action.

Our best posture exercises for seniors

The TRX row (inverted row)

This is a great exercise because you can use as much or as little of your body weight as you can. This exercise helps strengthen your upper back and can work to decrease the slouched and rounded shoulder position you most likely have. The stronger your upper back becomes the better. Your upper back needs to overpower the tightness that you have in your shoulders and chest which is partly causing this kyphotic (rounded and slouched shoulders) position to begin with.

Start with 12-15 repetitions. As you get stronger add in another set of 12-15 repetitions. Do this 3-4 times each week.

Coaching tips:

• Initiate the movement by pulling the shoulder blades together-not bending your elbows.
• Keep your chest puffed up
• Stop about when your elbows come in line with your body/back.

Bird dogs

I’ve mentioned this exercise before, and for good reason. The bird dog exercise is one of the best exercises for strengthening the lower back because the spine remains stable and not moving while the muscles surrounding the spine have to work overtime. Also because of the quadruped nature of this exercise, there’s very low loads actually going through the spine to compress it (like when you stand or sit).

The lower back muscles hold you upright (standing and seating) all day long, so they take a bit longer to work as well. Many practitioners recommend doing constant repetitions of this exercise. I disagree with this because if you do a quick rep, the muscles are only working for 1 maybe 2 seconds at most. That simply isn’t enough to start getting those muscles tired. If you can start to tire out these muscles, they get stronger. Instead, hold the top position for 10 seconds. Go down to reset and then go right back up to hold for another 10 secs. This will lead to the best posture outcomes.

I recommend doing 5-6 reps of 10 sec holds. Work up to doing 3 sets. This is an exercise you can and should do daily.

Coaching tips

• Reach out as far with the lifted limbs
• Don’t lift the arm and leg too high, that will cause the lower back to arch.
• Avoid shifting to one side as you lift/extend the opposing limbs
• Keep your hips parallel to the ground
• Pull your stance limbs in towards each other isometrically

Hip thrust

This is one of the most important senior posture exercises you can do because it’s so important, and it pays off the biggest dividends. You are probably familiar with the bridge. Bridges are great, however, they become too easy very quickly. The hip thrust is more challenging because of the angle it puts the hips and the greater range of motion it allows. The exercise may look silly or a bit inappropriate, but get over it.

I recommend starting with 12-15 reps. Once you can reach 20-25 reps it’s time to add some load onto your hips. You can do this exercise 2-4 times each week.

Coaching tips

• Have the chair/bench front edge right about the bottom of your shoulder blades or bra line
• Keep your eyes looking forward. If you look up to the ceiling you will end up arching your back and you won’t feel it in your glutes.
• Keep your shins vertical in the top position
• Push through your heels, if you don’t you’ll feel it in your thighs-which is wrong
• Tuck your hips under (almost like a crunch) as you come up which will ensure you are working the glutes.

Calf raises

The lower leg muscles are the calves. They are critical for having a correct walking gait where you heel strike and roll through your foot, pushing off through your toes. That last phase, the pushing off through the toes is a missing piece when we talk about senior posture exercises. As we age our ankles get tighter and tighter. One way to counter this is to strengthen the muscles, because muscles move bones/joints. Nobody wants to be the one who shuffles around the grocery store. One study found that as we age the calf muscles get weaker and that there was a direct correlation to the decreases in postural stability and balance in the older adult population they were testing.

It’s also interesting to note, that if you can raise yourself up onto your toes/balls of your feet, it’s impossible to slouch and hunch forward. So do yourself a favor and strengthen the calves with calf raises.

Start with 15-20 reps and work up to doing 3-4 sets of those reps 2-3 times each week.

Coaching tips

• Make sure your heel gets below the level of your toes going down, and higher than the toes when going up
• Hold the top and bottom for a second or two each rep, this removes the natural springy tendency, making the muscles have to work harder
• Have your legs straight, but don’t lock out or hyper-extend your knees.

There you have our top list for the best senior posture exercises, and why they are important.

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