Fall Prevention

Fall Prevention Program

THE FACTS

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• Each year, one in four Americans aged 65 and older will fall.
• Every 11 seconds, an older adult is treated in the emergency room for a fall. Every 19 minutes, an older adult dies from a fall.
• Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury and the most common cause of nonfatal trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults.
• Falls result in more than 2.8 million injuries treated in emergency departments annually. This includes over 800,000 hospitalizations and more than 27,000 deaths
• One in three adults 65 and older fall each year but less than half report the fall to the doctor

According to the National Council on Aging:

• Falls, with or without injury, also carry a heavy quality of life impact. A growing number of older adults fear falling and, as a result, limit their activities and social engagements. This can result in further physical decline, depression, social isolation, and feelings of helplessness.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

FPP is designed for participants who have had a recent fall, and/or lack the stability, strength and confidence to successfully perform their activities of daily living. Once a client is approved for the program, he/she is progressed through graduated phases of posture, balance, strength, power, movement re-patterning, and reactive training.

Note – Persons with vestibular issues and eyesight problems are excluded from this program.

CLIENT INTAKE AND INITIAL EVALUATION

• Comprehensive Client Intake. This includes documenting client’s health history, medications, pain, prior injuries, ability to perform ADL’s (activities of daily living), current exercise regimen, goals, and expectations.
• Posture Evaluation and Gait Analysis. Determines root cause of postural dysfunction, identifies muscular imbalances and compensation patterns during both static and dynamic posture as well as during gait. A posture grid, plumb line and both visual and video analysis will be employed.

PROGRAMMING APPROACH

• Posture Reset – All programs will begin with a corrective exercise sequence to “reset” the posture and dysfunctional compensation patterns. Posture re-alignment creates optimal joint mechanics and muscle length-tension relationships and creates symmetry for weight bearing.

Example: A corrective exercise sequence will be administered as a pre-training warmup to solidify a base of support for training progressions.

• Static and Dynamic Balance – We will test and assign exercises in order to progress the client from ground to static standing, to movement based balance. Again, progression will be strictly based on client evaluation and abilities.

Example: progression from lying supine, quadruped, half kneeling, full kneeling, standing, single leg.

• Re-patterning – Re-programming faulty client movement patterns to the central nervous system (i.e. re-synching the software to the hardware).

Example: sitting to standing (squat pattern), heel/toe walking, hip hinging, proper bending and reaching, side stepping and avoiding obstacles.

• Power/Reactive – the ability to move and react with speed and with agility.

Example:  med-ball throws against the wall for hand-eye coordination and speed, perturbation training (gently pushing the client in different directions)

DIFFERENTIATORS

• The main focus of the team is to avoid the common mistake of “adding strength to dysfunction”. Any strength or balance program that doesn’t address posture first will eventually lead to muscle imbalances, altered joint mechanics and pain.
• Our training progressions are steered by the client intake and posture evaluation and backed by collectively 40 years of industry experience.
• The detailed and varied analyses conducted up front, will allow for a more accurate understanding of the clients issue(s) and a more targeted approach to exercise selection.
• Balance training exercises are endorsed by The Mayo Clinic, UCLA, Harvard Medical School and The Cleveland Clinic.
• Additionally, we regularly confer with medical professionals at The Hospital for Special Surgery, New York University and The Mayo Clinic, as well as with physical therapists in Boston, New York and Aspen.
• Our focus is not only to correct a faulty movement pattern or to improve overall balance, but also to provide the critical component of general strengthening to our aging client population. As a final note, we also address any activity of daily living that may be difficult for the client (getting in and out of the car/bathtub/chair) in order to gain the client’s trust and acceptance, and to make them feel empowered.