The 12-KEY Active Daily Life Movements for Women over 50

Carrying involves holding a load, such as a child, pot plant, or 10kg bag of mulch to spread around the plants. It may also involve walking a distance with the load, for example taking grocery bags from the store to the car.

The crawl is a cross body exercise, where the opposite hand and leg move simultaneously, and uses every muscle—including shoulders, abdominals, quadriceps, calves and glutes. It's useful in everyday life for things like playing with kids or pets on the floor or getting around in small places.

Gait/walking is simply the process of walking, which is essential for most daily activities. It requires coordination, balance, and strength, particularly in the core and lower body.

Getting up from the floor is an essential movement and learning to get up without holding onto furniture can be a case of survival if you’re alone, fallen over and can’t lift yourself back up again.

This movement pattern is initiated when we bend over to pick something up from the floor, weed the garden, or lift something up from a lower position too high. It’s common in everyday life, from picking a baby up from their cot to lifting a heavy package from the boot of the car.

There are many times when we need to lift overhead, such as putting carry-on bags on a plane into the overhead locker, or when that heavy cooking pot needs to go back onto the high shelf in the kitchen, and picking up and having fun with kids and/or grand kids.

If you’re out walking and need to take a big step over a log, or step over the dog on the lounge room floor because he just won’t budge, you will lunge. The glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, calf muscles and abdominals are activated while back muscles act as stabilisers.

There are a variety of pulling methods, such as a vertical pull you would do on a pull-up bar which strengthens muscles in your shoulders, upper back, core and arms. Or, a pull where you bring something towards you, such as dragging a kayak to the beach, or a disobedient dog who doesn’t want to go home yet.

There are a variety of ways we use a pushing movement. You might push a child in a stroller up a steep hill, a wheelbarrow loaded with dirt in the backyard, or simply rearrange your furniture.

Rolling is a basic move using upper and lower extremities, and the core, to move from one side to the other. It involves coordinated movements of the head, neck and upper body. It forms part of many daily activities like transitioning from lying in bed to getting up, play with kids and pets.

We all need to squat. The squat is a compound, full body exercise using thighs (quadriceps), hips, buttocks, and hamstrings. If you can’t squat you need to learn how, as every time we sit down or get up off the toilet, we squat. When getting into a car, we perform a one-legged squat with a twist to get in.

If you work at a checkout, play golf, or move groceries from a trolley into the car, you twist or rotate. We often twist the same way a lot of time (ie. on the same side), so it’s important to rotate the other direction to maintain balanced muscles.