Can You Step Backwards Without Your Foot Or Torso Turning Out?

Walking backwards is often overlooked, but research shows it can enhance forward walking, especially in stroke patients; it has other benefits for everyone else, too. The physiotherapists at Fitness4Life Physical Therapy explain:

…and one step back

How it works: walking backwards heightens proprioception and stimulates muscles, improving balance and posture. Additionally, our daily lives tend to involve forward-leaning postures, causing upper back bending, and walking backwards helps counterbalance this.

Extra benefits: training to walk backwards can reduce the risk of falls, as stepping back is a common movement that is often untrained.

Exercise: try doing backwards lunges, to assess your skill and balance while moving backward. If foot rotation or torso rotation occurs during the exercise, then there’s room for improvement. Correcting these movements is then simply a matter of practicing backward lunges without turning.

10almonds tip: any exercise is only as good as your will to actually do it. For this reason, dancing is a great exercise in this case, as almost all forms of dance involve stepping backwards (in order to have steps without travelling somewhere, forwards steps are usually balanced with backwards ones)

For more on all this, plus a visual demonstration of the exercise, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Fall Special ← About how to avoid falling, and how to avoid (and failing that, at least minimize) injury if you do fall. If you think this only happens to other/older people, remember, there’s a first time for everything, so it is better to be prepared in advance!

Take care!