Don't Fall

Six months after I moved to Vietnam, I fell in the street in Da Nang. Scraped my leg and knee, ruined a pair of Levis, limped for a while. No big deal. Got up, went home, cleaned it up.

Last September I fell again. This time in Hoi An. I broke my right elbow.

A Vietnamese neighbour found me. He took me to the hospital. Then to another hospital. Then to an operating theatre in Da Nang. He hired a nurse. He did everything. I had plates put in my arm. I still need to have them taken out.

I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m telling you because I know exactly what it costs to fall when you’re over 70. It’s not just the pain. It’s the recovery. The loss of confidence. The fear that it’ll happen again.

Lots of older people die after a fall. They don’t die from the fall itself. They die from what comes after — the hip replacement, the infection, the months in bed, the muscle loss that never fully comes back.

I decided I wasn’t going to be one of them.

The problem with most balance advice

If you search for “balance exercises for seniors,” you’ll mostly find one thing: stand on one leg.

That’s fine for a party trick. But it’s not great for preventing falls. Because falls don’t happen when you’re standing still. They happen when you’re moving — stepping off a kerb, turning too fast, reaching for something, getting out of a chair.

Will Harlow is a physio who specialises in people over 50. He lives in Farnham, which is pretty close to where I used to live in Surrey. I’ve never met him, but I’ve watched a lot of his videos. He explained it better than anyone else:

“When most people work on their balance, they just practice standing on one leg. But falls don’t happen when you’re stood still — they happen when you lose your balance and you can’t correct yourself.”

So the exercise that actually prevents falls has to train exactly that. The ability to catch yourself when you start to wobble.

The toe lean

This is the single best balance exercise I’ve found. It takes two minutes. You don’t need any equipment. You can do it in your kitchen.

Here’s how.

Stand in a doorway or in the corner between two walls. This is your safety corner — the worst thing that can happen is you bump into a wall.

Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Keeping your body straight, lean forward from your ankles — not from your waist. Keep your whole body rigid like a plank of wood. Lean forward until you feel your toes gripping the ground to stop you from falling. Then slowly pull yourself back.

That’s it. That’s the whole exercise.

Do it slowly. Each lean should take about three seconds forward, a pause, three seconds back. Aim for five to ten leans. Once a day.

Why this works

When you start to wobble, your foot muscles should instinctively grab the ground to pull you back. But most people have lost this reflex. The connection between their feet and their brain has gone quiet from years of not using it.

Will Harlow describes it perfectly:

“It’s like trying to switch on a light when someone has cut the circuit. Nothing happens. But unlike an electrical circuit, you can rebuild this connection.”

These muscles respond quickly when you train them consistently. Your body hasn’t forgotten how to do it — it just needs reminding.

The toe lean is that reminder.

When you’re ready for more

After a week or two, you can make it harder. Hold a small weight — a book, a bag of rice, a full water bottle — against your chest. The extra weight means your toes have to work harder to pull you back. Otherwise, same exercise, same slow movement, same safety corner.

A note on falling

The toe lean will make you more stable. But it won’t make you un-fall-able. Everyone falls eventually. The real question is what happens after.

If your legs are weak, you’re more than five times as likely to fall in any given year. That’s from an actual study. And when you fall with weak legs, you break things. Strong legs don’t prevent the fall — they give you a better chance of catching yourself, and a better chance of getting back up.

But that’s the next article.

Will Harlow’s latest book is Independence for Life. His YouTube channel is HT Physio.

Next time: getting off the floor when you can’t kneel.