Recommended simple exercises for recreational activities for the elderly
We’d like to introduce some recommended exercises perfect for recreation at care facilities such as day service centers, or any place where seniors gather!
Many older adults find it difficult to move their legs and lower back freely, and standing can be a challenge.
However, if you avoid moving your body altogether, your mobility may decline further, increasing the risk of falls and becoming bedridden.
In this article, we’ve gathered simple exercises that seniors can do with ease.
Many of them can be done while seated, so be sure to try them with friends around you to help reduce a lack of physical activity!
- For seniors: Enjoyable exercises done while seated, accessible for wheelchair users.
- For Seniors: Fun and Lively Exercise Recreation
- Summary of exercises for seniors: introducing preventative care movements by body part.
- [For Seniors] Fun Small-Group Recreation
- [For Seniors] Simple Rhythm Exercises: Recommended Songs and Routines
- [For Seniors] Fun Brain Training! Lively Whiteboard Activities
- [Seated] Fun Health Exercises for Older Adults and Seniors
- [For Seniors] Recommended Easy Strength Training
- For seniors: Enjoyable stick exercises. Easy workouts.
- [For Seniors] Recreational activities and games that let you have fun while strengthening your legs
- For seniors: Leg-strengthening exercises you can do without overexertion.
- [Today's Recommendation] Gentle Health Exercises for Seniors
- [For Seniors] Fun Exercises You Can Do While Seated
Recommended easy exercises for senior recreation (151–160)
Ashi-fumi A-I-U-Be exercises
Let’s do “marching in place” while practicing the “Ai-U-Be” mouth exercise.
This routine is recommended for older adults who are already comfortable moving their mouths into “A” and “I” shapes with the Ai-U-Be exercise.
By adding marching, you can also strengthen the iliopsoas at the hip and the abdominal muscles.
It can even help train the gluteal muscles.
This supports balance in older adults and helps prevent falls.
The key points are to move your mouth widely and stick out your tongue when vocalizing.
Exaggerating the movements a bit more than you would in normal conversation—within your comfortable range—can enhance the benefits.
Please make good use of this exercise.
Stepping Health Life
It’s a simple health device wide enough to place both feet on, with a rounded bottom that curves toward the center.
When you press down on one side, the other side lifts.
Its instability encourages you to focus on balance.
Because it’s intentionally designed not to be stable, it’s meant to be used while seated for safety.
By practicing deliberate, steady steps in this unstable environment, it may help improve your stability when you encounter uneven footing in everyday walking.
Ankle Swelling Improvement Exercises
As we age, the ankles become stiff and harder to move.
This increases the likelihood of tripping while walking and raises the risk of falls.
With today’s exercises, let’s work on making your ankles move more easily and freely.
Older adults tend to experience leg swelling, so these exercises can also help reduce edema.
When sitting in a chair and lifting your heels off the floor (a tiptoe position), the key to moving the ankles freely is not to have only the tips of your toes touching the floor, but to bend from the base of the toes so that all the toes are in contact with the floor.
Hand exercises that also help prevent falls
Extend one arm forward with the hand open, and place the other hand on your chest and make a fist.
While singing, switch this shape from one side to the other.
If you do this exercise standing, a key point is that it also draws your attention to posture.
It’s important to keep singing as you go; handling two tasks at once helps activate the brain.
If you switch the arm position and hand shape to the opposite in the middle, your attention instantly shifts to your hand shape, which also trains your decision-making.
By staying mindful of your posture and moving your body firmly, you can expect not only brain-training benefits but also muscle-strengthening effects such as fall prevention.
Neck exercises
In recent years, as smartphones have become widespread, not only shoulder stiffness but also neck stiffness has reportedly increased.
If you’re an older adult using a smartphone, do you feel stiffness in your neck? When there is stiffness around the neck, the autonomic nervous system—which regulates internal organ activity—can become sluggish, making you more prone to fatigue.
So let’s loosen up the neck area with simple neck exercises that even older adults can easily do.
These exercises include easy movements you can perform while seated.
They help balance the autonomic nervous system and provide a refreshing break, so try to continue every day within a comfortable range.
The Longed-For Hawaii RouteHaruo Oka
A signature song by Haruo Oka, a singer active from before to after the war, is “Akogare no Hawaii Kōro” (The Longed-for Hawaii Route), which was released in 1948 and became a huge hit.
It was also made into a film starring Oka and Hibari Misora, so many older people are likely to know it.
The choreography—stretching your arms widely up, down, left, and right, and patting your shoulders—can be done using just the upper body, making it ideal for recreational activities in care facilities.
By all means, try singing along and give the dance a go together!
Recommended Exercises for Easy Senior Recreational Activities (161–170)
Bound cushion
To make walking smoother, it’s important to train both the ability to lift your feet and the power to step down.
Among foot training methods, this one focuses on developing your stepping power.
By repeatedly pressing down hard with both feet on a cushion that has a springy, rebounding structure, you can build that stepping strength.
The cushion’s size, which allows both feet to be placed on it, is also key—use it to pay attention to balancing the strength between your left and right foot.
If you concentrate on the instant of the step, you can train explosive foot power; if you let the compressed cushion return slowly, you can work on strength endurance.