As a Sheltered Home, we require our residents to be reasonably mobile and have the ability to feed and go to the toilet themselves. With our residents’ age averaging at 85 years old and our oldest resident at 100 years old this year, how do we keep our residents healthy?

Exercise.

With physiotherapy sessions carried out by our Physiotherapy Aides six times a week and a professional Physiotherapist customising group and individual exercises to fit our residents, we leave no stones unturned when it comes to ageing actively for our residents.

So, how do our Physiotherapy Aides get it done? Let us bring you through a typical group Physiotherapy session!

Every morning after their breakfast at about 8am, our residents gather at the Physiotherapy Room.

A qualified Physiotherapist will first conduct a stretching exercise for our residents. For many people, warming-up is the easiest part of the exercise routine before going on to the ‘real’ exercise. To our elderly residents, this is instead, one of the most important routine of the whole exercise.

Proper stretching not only helps our residents loosen up their limbs and joints, but it also ensures that our residents gradually warm into the next part of the session. Without proper warming-up, our residents may find it difficult to perform the actions during the exercises.

After a proper warm-up, it is time for our residents to move their muscles!

One of the more common group exercises is as simple as passing the ball. Our Physiotherapy Aides will seat the residents in a big circle, slightly angled to their left. Once every one is seated properly, it is time to start the exercise!

One of the residents will start to pass the ball to the resident on their right side. Remember that our residents are seated angled to their left? In that sitting position, passing the ball to their right, over their heads, will ensure that their arms, back and upper back muscles are used to complete the action.

Physiotherapy Aides will move around in circles, ensuring our residents don’t ‘laze’ by passing the ball sloppily.

After the ‘pass-the-ball’ routine, the group exercise for the day is complete, but we encourage our residents to continue to exercise for a little while longer. One exercise our residents find very interesting is to play a few games of bowling on the Nintendo Wii!

By mimicking the actions of bowling using the wireless controller to play the game, our residents will be able to move their limbs while enjoying the fun of bowling!

For our elderly residents, exercising can be quite a chore for them. To them, they feel that they have worked hard enough when they were younger. Now that they are older, they want to take things easy and exercise is the last thing on their mind.

We will need to provide them with constant encouragement and a variety of activities during our physiotherapy sessions for them to take an interest in exercising. But eventually, it is all worth it, because we know that only by encouraging our residents to be active that they can continue to stay healthy and mobile for many more years to come.