Active Aging Benchmarks for Seniors: Improving Balance, Posture, and Mobility

The Human Body Is Made to Move at Any Age

The human body is remarkable in its ability to heal and adapt. Even if you have lost some capabilities through lack of use, injury, or a medical condition, you can regain them—or at least improve them—at any age. The human body is made to move, and it moves best with practice. If you fail to use your joints and muscles consistently as you age, you can lose your range of motion and physical capability. However, you can keep your ability to function well if you stay active.

Regaining and maintaining the ability to move allows you to live a more independent life—one that gives you the freedom to do more of what you want to do. Joseph Wegley, DPT, works with individuals every day to help them regain and exceed previous mobility levels regardless of age, injury, or illness. His passion is helping people regain balance, strength, coordination, and the ability to complete routine daily tasks. This ability allows them to live more fully and with greater independence.

Through his work, Wegley has identified nine benchmarks for maintaining and maximizing your mobility. "Made to Move" provides you with practical tools to help you maintain or regain your mobility, including instructions for simple benchmark movements to establish a baseline, wherever you are, activities to help you improve if you can't fully achieve the benchmark, safe and effective exercises for strength and endurance using equipment you already have or can obtain inexpensively, and tips to help you realize you have the power to do this for yourself.

Wegley's mission is to help people regain, maintain, and improve their physical abilities well into the later years of life—to offer them a means to greater satisfaction. With a little instruction and motivation, most aging adults could prevent falls and a decline in their ability to do routine daily tasks, and Wegley wrote this manual to reach more aging adults before they need the services of a physical therapist to recover from injury or illness.

Wegley is board certified in Neurologic Physical Therapy with the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties and recognized as a Certified Exercise Physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine, as well as a Certified Brain Injury Specialist with the Brain Injury Association of America. He began his pursuit toward the profession of physical therapy by working as a physical therapy aide in a nursing home environment, where he found his passion for contributing positively to the lives of aging adults. He obtained his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from the University of Montana in 2004 and practices in Boise, Idaho.

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