Rehab and Conditioning for Older Adults

This one-hour course discusses the importance of movement and exercise for older patients from the perspective of flexibility, balance, strength, floor recovery, bone density, muscle composition, ADL independence, fall prevention, and quality of life maintenance that you, as a chiropractor, are well-positioned to program. The course also reviews how to effectively program rehab and conditioning for older adult patients. As our patients age, conversations surrounding the importance of bone, joint, and muscle health are much different than conversations with younger patients. Every year we age, it is more challenging to maintain muscle mass, bone density, and walking capacity if we are not actively training to do so. Older adults have a vast variety of “starting lines” and “finish lines” for exercise pursuits, and many can tolerate advice beyond the generalized stretching they are usually prescribed. This course will discuss resources available for movement and exercise support for our patients as well as common barriers (lumbar spinal stenosis with neurogenic claudication, joint replacements, fall risk, etc.) and how to navigate them. The course will review how to reverse engineer functional goal setting and how to incrementally progress. We will discuss ongoing initiatives such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s STEADI Algorithm, the American Public Health Association’s 2023 Fall Prevention Initiative, and any updates from the Clinical Compass Best Practice Guideline. Takeaways from the course include easy to implement, low-tech rehab programming examples and foundational knowledge that every practitioner should know. 

This recording is from ACA Engage 2025--this session was originally presented live, users viewing this program online will be shown visual aids (PowerPoint slides) and speaker audio.

1 CE credit in PACE accepted states

PACE ID: 0124251