Walk Better with Thin-Soled Shoes, Weight Lifting

Report #6511

Older people often look clumsy when they walk because they lose strength and coordination. An article in Age and Aging showed that wearing thin-soled shoes and lifting weights will help them to walk more efficiently.

To help you coordinate your muscles while you walk, you "feel" the ground with the bottom of your feet. With aging, the nerves on the bottom of your feet lose a lot of their sensitivity and you find it difficult to "feel" the ground and, as a result, appear clumsy and can even fall. Wearing thick-soled shoes blocks your ability to 'feel' the ground. So, older people who have difficulty walking should wear thin-soled shoes.

They also need to strengthen their muscles. Your muscles are made up of millions of individual fibers, just like a rope is made up of smaller threads. Each muscle fiber is activated by a single nerve that gets its messages from the brain. As you age, nerve cells whither and die and the muscle fiber that is attached to it also dies. With aging, each muscle has fewer fibers to do the same job, so it becomes weaker. To retain strength with aging, you have to enlarge and strengthen the remaining muscle fibers. The only way to do this is to exercise against increasing resistance, but, with aging you have to be more careful when you train for strength. Your muscles are weaker than they were when you were younger and are more likely to tear. So, doing 3 sets of ten with light weights of knee straightening and bending and leg presses can strengthen leg muscles and improve coordination.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News