[For Seniors] Strengthen Your Legs! Recommended Training Items
Some older adults find that their legs don’t feel as strong as they age.
With that in mind, here are some recommended training items to help strengthen your legs.
Daily exercise and training are important for building leg strength.
However, many people start exercising suddenly and end up giving up halfway because they can’t keep up physically.
Begin with training you can continue without overexerting yourself.
Use this article as a reference when choosing your training items.
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- For seniors: Enjoyable exercises done while seated, accessible for wheelchair users.
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[For Seniors] Strengthen Your Legs! Recommended Training Items (1–10)
Easy Stepper
It’s structured so that when you press down with one foot, the other is pushed upward, and you alternate pressing with each foot.
By focusing your attention on the force of the press, you’ll learn how to move your feet and apply power during walking.
Since it’s a simple exercise you can do while seated by just moving your feet, a key point is that you can train your feet while doing something else, like reading a book.
During regular walking, you often need to pay attention to your surroundings, so there are times when you can’t fully focus on your feet.
By doing this ankle-moving exercise while engaged in another activity, your everyday walking may become smoother.
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.
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.
[For Seniors] Strengthen Your Legs! Recommended Training Items (11–20)
Skatie Gold
Do you know about Skatey Gold? It’s a training item that’s like a pair of shoes connected by a rubber band.
You wear it on both feet and slide side to side.
Thanks to the rubber, you can move smoothly as if you were gliding on an ice rink.
It’s effective not only for your legs and lower body but also for training your glutes.
Each session is about three minutes, so it’s perfect for people who aren’t keen on long workouts.
Although sales have ended on the official website, you can still buy it on Amazon and other sites.
Tube training
Don’t overlook the rubber bands and band tubes used for tube training.
At first glance, they’re just large rubber bands, but they can be used in many ways.
For example, you can sit down, loop them around both feet, and move your legs outward; or pull them up above your knees and lift your thighs.
The great thing is that as long as you have a chair, you can do these exercises anywhere.
Inexpensive options cost under 1,000 yen, so they’re also recommended if you just want to give them a try.
Inner thigh training
There are also training items designed to strengthen the adductor muscles on the inner thighs.
The most commonly sold type involves placing a V-shaped device between your legs while seated and squeezing it.
Although it doesn’t look like there’s much movement, it provides solid resistance.
Another advantage is that, because the movement is minimal, you can do it while watching TV.
Some items can also be used to train other muscles, so take a look around and compare your options.
A stick made of newspaper
This is a lower-body workout that uses a rod made by tightly rolling newspaper into a long, slender tube.
Even simple exercises like marching in place can become more focused when you use the rod alongside them, helping you pay attention to which muscles you should be engaging.
When doing exercises that involve lifting your legs, you can use the rod to clearly indicate how high to raise your leg, and aim for that target.
It’s also fun to get creative with how you use the rod—such as using it like a goal to reach, or as a tool that provides resistance against your leg movements.
Because it’s a homemade piece of equipment, the training feels approachable and can help you build strength with a sense of familiarity.