After forty years of examining bodies, the people who are still moving well late in life have a few things in common. None of them are secrets.
People who move well in their seventies are rarely the ones who did everything right. They are the ones who kept doing a few specific things: lifting something heavy, standing on one leg, getting down on the floor and back up, walking with purpose, changing position often, dealing with small problems early, and keeping their balance senses in use. Most of these can be started at any age.
I have been examining bodies for forty years. Spines, joints, muscles, nerves, the way people stand up out of a chair and the way they turn their heads to back out of a driveway.
People age differently, and much of that is outside anyone’s control: genetics, illness, injury, circumstance, luck. But some of it is habit, and habits leave marks I can read.
By the time someone is seventy, I can usually tell within a few minutes whether they have been doing certain things. Not because they tell me. Because their body tells me.
Here is what the ones who are still moving well have in common.
1. They Still Lift Something Heavy
Not heroic weights. But something that is genuinely hard for them, regularly.
Muscle is not just for appearance or sport. It is what gets you off the floor, up a flight of stairs, and out of a chair without using your arms. It is also one of the few things about aging that responds quickly to a decision. People in their seventies and eighties gain strength when they train. That has been demonstrated repeatedly.
The World Health Organization recommends muscle-strengthening activity on two or more days a week for every adult, with no upper age limit attached.
What to do: pick two days a week. Carry something, push something, squat to a chair, use weights if you have them. The specific exercise matters less than the fact that it is hard for you.
2. They Can Stand on One Leg
This is the one that surprises people. Balance is a skill, and like any skill, it is kept by practice. (Habit 7 covers the senses that feed it.)
In a study of more than 1,700 adults aged 51 to 75, those who could not stand on one leg for ten seconds had a substantially higher risk of dying in the following decade than those who could. Roughly one in five could not do it, and the proportion climbed steeply with age — about 5 percent of people in their early fifties, more than half of those aged 71 to 75.
Balance is not a separate talent you either have or don’t. It is a skill your nervous system maintains only if you use it.
What to do: build it into something you already do. When I brush my teeth, I stand on one leg for my lower teeth, then switch legs for the upper ones. Keep a hand near the counter. If one leg is too much today, start with your feet together on a firm floor, holding the counter as much as you need.
3. They Still Get Down on the Floor — and Back Up
Researchers have studied exactly this, scoring how much support people need to sit down on the floor and stand back up. In adults aged 51 to 80, the ones who needed the most help were several times more likely to die during the follow-up years than those who needed none.
The test itself is not magic. What it measures is: leg strength, hip mobility, balance and the confidence to commit your weight to a movement. Those four things decline together, and they decline quietly.
Here is the part that matters. Sometimes people stop getting down on the floor long before they physically lose the ability. And the longer they avoid it, the harder it can become.
What to do: get down on the floor once a day for some other reason. Play with a grandchild, stretch, look under the bed. Use whatever support you need. The point is to keep the pathway open.
One caution about those two studies, and about the walking research below. They show that people who can do these things tend to live longer. They do not show that practicing the tests adds years to your life. What the tests measure is capacity — and capacity is worth having for its own sake, whatever it predicts.
4. They Walk Like They Are Going Somewhere
How fast a person walks is one of the better predictors of how long they will live. Pooled research across nine studies of tens of thousands of older adults found that faster usual walking speed was associated with longer survival.
Walking speed is a summary score. It reflects heart, lungs, legs, balance, vision and confidence all at once. That is why it predicts so much.
This is not about step counts. I see plenty of people with high step counts who shuffle.
What to do: once during each walk, pick up the pace for two or three minutes. Walk like you are late. Then settle back.
5. They Change Position Often — and Worry Less About Perfect Posture
This is the item that contradicts most of what you have read.
I am not persuaded that there is one correct way to sit. What I see in my office is that the people who hurt are usually the ones who held one position for hours, whatever that position was. The body tolerates a great deal of loading. What it tolerates poorly is staying still.
What to do: stop trying to sit perfectly, and start moving sooner. Stand up every thirty minutes. Shift. Cross and uncross. Your next position is more important than your current one.
6. They Deal With Small Problems While They Are Still Small
Almost nobody arrives in my office at the beginning. They arrive after six months of a thing they were waiting out.
Sometimes pain settles before normal movement returns. The pain goes away, the person decides the problem is over, and the shoulder that no longer reaches overhead, or the hip that no longer rotates, quietly becomes the new normal. Five years of that adds up, and it adds up where you cannot see it.
The people still moving well at seventy are not the ones who never had problems. They are the ones who did not let problems become permanent adaptations.
What to do: if something has been limited for more than a few weeks, get it examined while the only cost is an appointment.
7. They Keep the Senses That Feed Balance in Use
Habit 2 was balance as a skill you practice. This one is about the information that skill depends on.
Balance is built from three streams of information: your eyes, your inner ear, and the sensors in your joints and feet that report where you are in space. Your brain compares all three. Lose one and you lean harder on the others.
Most people do not lose balance from weakness alone. They lose it because the information has become poorer and the system has stopped being challenged.
What to do: have your vision checked. Walk on varied surfaces — grass, gravel, sand — not only flat pavement. Spend some time barefoot at home, which keeps the sensors in your feet reporting. If the room moves when you turn your head, that is worth having examined rather than avoided.
What These Seven Have in Common
None of them are about preventing anything.
Every one is a capacity you keep by using it. Strength, balance, floor access, pace, variety, early attention, sensory input. The body maintains what you ask of it and quietly releases what you don’t.
Don’t start all seven tomorrow. Choose the one you have neglected most, and begin there.
And almost all of it can be started later than people think. The research on strength and balance training in people in their seventies and eighties is consistently encouraging. The habits above are not a prize for the people who began at thirty.
An Invitation
Whether you live here in Santa Monica or are reading this from somewhere else, you’re welcome at Ptak Family Chiropractic.
We’ll look at how you move, how your joints function, and what your balance and reflexes show us. What we find determines what we do — and if what you need belongs with your physician or another specialist, we’ll tell you that too.
If you’ve noticed changes in your balance, strength, flexibility, or the way you move, let’s find out what’s happening and what you can do about it. We never charge you to sit down and talk about your needs.
Call Ptak Family Chiropractic at 310.473.7991 to make an appointment, or visit ptakfamilychiropractic.com.
Selected References
Araujo CG, de Souza e Silva CG, Laukkanen JA, et al. Successful 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2022;56(17):975–980.
Brito LBB, Ricardo DR, Araújo DSMS, Ramos PS, Myers J, Araújo CGS. Ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all-cause mortality. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. 2014;21(7):892–898.
Studenski S, Perera S, Patel K, et al. Gait speed and survival in older adults. JAMA. 2011;305(1):50–58.
World Health Organization. WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020.
About the author. Dr. Jeffrey Ptak, DC, DSS, MSS, MA, is the founder of Ptak Family Chiropractic in Santa Monica, where he has practiced since 1986. His postgraduate study includes Chiropractic Functional Neurology through the Carrick Institute and advanced training through the International Association of Functional Neurology and Rehabilitation. He is the author of the forthcoming book It’s Like You Never Left, to be published by Indigo River Publishing.
Educational purposes only. This article does not diagnose any condition and is not a substitute for medical care. Begin new physical activity at a level appropriate to your current health, and consult your physician before starting if you have heart, lung or neurological conditions, or if you have fallen recently. Attempt the balance and floor tests described here only with support nearby. New or unexplained loss of balance, weakness, numbness or dizziness warrants medical evaluation. Individual results vary and no particular outcome is promised.
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