As we learned in Foundations, each signature SilverSneakers class targets both health and skill related goals.
Flexibility and muscular strength are the primary health-related fitness goals in Stability:
- Flexibility exercises are performed during Stability to improve posture, increase the range of motion around joints, and improve gait. Stability targets flexibility work around the two-ball and socket joints of the hips and shoulders.
- Muscular strength exercises slow the cellular aging process and improve muscle mass, therefore reducing the risk of a fall. Stability exercises are designed to train for muscular strength by incorporating standing exercises that challenge the strength and endurance of the lower body.
Since Stability is a skills-based class, the primary goals are related to the five skill-related components of fitness that impact daily function and fall prevention: Agility, Balance, Coordination, Speed, and Power.
Stability aims to improve skill-related components of fitness in the following ways:
- Agility is an important skill for fall prevention. Your participant’s ability to control their weight when moving forward, backward, and side-to-side is a measure of their functional skill. In Stability, exercises that shift the center of the body target agility and help to enhance functional skill.
- Balance is required for daily function. In each Stability class, balance exercises are performed both dynamically and statically. This unique combination helps participants master balance-based exercises and improve their movement confidence.
- Coordination indicates neurophysiological fitness or the way the brain and the body connect. Regular exercise not only helps the body, but it helps the brain, too! In Stability, coordination is targeted through movement progressions and contralateral movement, which is movement that crosses the midline of the body.
- Speed improvements aid reaction-time, which makes participants more stable on their feet. Stability incorporates exercises at different tempos so that participants are ready to make quick changes to their stance, gait, and posture, avoiding the risk of a fall.
- Power is associated with the performance of daily activities and fall prevention. Due to changes in both the musculoskeletal and neuromuscular systems, along with sarcopenia (loss of muscle) as we age, power training is important. Stability includes drills that challenge the body’s ability to accelerate movements that lift and lower the body’s center of gravity. Squats, lunges, and additional lower-body movements help improve participant’s power.
Together, all of the above help make functional fitness gains the basis of the Stability class:
Functional fitness is a main focus of Stability. Functional fitness can be defined as having the physiological capacity to perform normal, everyday activities safely and independently without undue fatigue.
Functional movement patterns including a squat, lunge, push and pull, gait training, bending and rotational exercises should be performed during each Stability class. These movements will help improve the performance of daily activities.