Weakness In Legs? Strength & Stability Solutions For Ages 50+

Why Do My Legs Feel Weak and Shaky?

There are three primary reasons why your legs may be getting weaker as you age:

1. neurological weakness
2. deconditioning
3. specific muscle weakness from muscle imbalances

I'll go through each one of those and then give you some solutions for each of them.

Keep in mind this is a very complex problem, so make sure to get your weakness checked out by a healthcare professional.

Neurological Weakness In Legs

The first problem is neurological weakness.

That basically means that the signal isn't getting from your brain to your leg muscles to tell them to turn on.

That can be caused from multiple different things itself, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, or other various neurological diseases.

Leg weakness can also be from mechanical compression of the nervous system.

Narrowing of the spinal canal in your neck or your lower back can compress on your spinal cord. This is known as central canal spinal stenosis, and cause leg weakness and difficulty walking.

More often though, it's compression of the nerve roots after they've branched off of the spinal cord in your lower back. spinal cord and go down into your legs.

This is known as foraminal stenosis.

How To Improve Leg Weakness From Spinal Stenosis

Backward bending movements of your neck or back narrow the spaces where the nerve roots exit your spine and functionally narrow the spinal canal.

Therefore, keeping your chin down and your lower back relatively forward leaned can help take pressure off of your nerves.

This is one reason why you often see people leaning over a cane or a walker or a grocery cart - because it opens up the spaces in the lower back.

In turn, this can help improve your leg strength and allow you to walk longer.

Weakness In Legs From Deconditioning

Problem number two is deconditioning.

Maybe you've had an injury or a surgery and you've been immobilized for a while.

Or maybe you've just gotten into a sedentary lifestyle and haven't been doing as much activity as you used to

In that case, your muscles get deconditioned.

That means they lose the ability to produce energy efficiently.

There are structures in your muscles called mitochondria, which are basically the energy factories of your muscles.

Mitochondria are present in all of your muscles, not just in the legs. They turn glucose from food into energy.

When you're deconditioned, the number of mitochondria in your muscles decreases. Therefore, you can't produce energy as efficiently and your legs feel weak an tired sooner more quickly.

How To Improve Leg Weakness From Deconditioning

One way to get stronger if your weakness is from deconditioning is to do aerobic activity.

That replenishes the mitochondria in your muscles and allows you to walk longer.

Walking is one good way to do that.

However, if you're already having weakness and difficulty walking, you may not be able to walk for as long as you'd like.

Using a recumbent bike, walking in the water, doing water aerobics, or walking leaning over a grocery cart or over a wheel walker are other alternatives.

There are all good ways to improve improve your muscle endurance when walking.

Weakness In Legs Due To Muscle Imbalances

The third problem is due to muscle imbalances.

This is where one muscle or muscle group is working too hard and another muscle group isn't working enough.

There are way too many different muscle imbalances to cover them all in one video.

However, the primary muscle imbalances that can make your legs feel weak fall into 2 categories.

Sagittal Plane Muscle Imbalances

You have your strong prime mover muscles that largely move you in a forward-backwards (sagittal) plane.

Those include muscles like your quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings.

Frontal and Transverse Plane Muscle Imbalances

You can also develop muscle imbalances in your stabilizing muscles.

These muscles are usually in the side-to-side (frontal) and rotational (transverse) planes.

These are usually much smaller muscles, that assist the prime movers to work better.

So, we'll go over one exercise to help strengthen each one of those types of imbalances.

Best Strengthening Exercise For Weakness In Legs

The first exercise is for your large, strong prime mover muscles. These muscles move you in a forward-backward plane.

The sit-to-stand is a convenient exercise to strengthen weak leg muscles.

It's something you probably do many times per day anyway.  Furthermore, if you've started to develop weakness in your legs, it's likely that you may have started developing difficulty standing up from chairs.

To do a sit-to-stand, start out by leaning your trunk forward from a sitting position.

This gets your center of gravity over top of your feet.  The farther forward you lean, the easier the exercise becomes.

Make sure that you keep your hips, knees, and toes all aligned when you're doing this.

You don't want to allow your legs to drift inwards.

This exercises  focuses on both the prime movers as well as the stabilizers that move you side to side.

Do this exercise frequently throughout the day.

Rather than doing one set of 15 or one set of 20 repetitions, you may need to start with smaller, more frequent sets.

For example, every time you stand up from a chair, do it five times for every time you're going to stand up (when feasible).

As you get stronger, you can progress to doing higher repetitions or even start to add weight.

Check out this post for more details.

Exercise To Help Side-to-Side Weakness In Legs

The second exercise is to strengthen the stabilizing muscles in your legs.

These muscles control the side-to-side and rotational movements of your legs.

They also help balance your body over  your legs so that you don't tip to the side when walking.

Balancing on one leg is one of the best exercises to strengthen the stabilizing muscles in your legs.

This uses your side hip muscles, your gluteus medius and gluteus minimus.

To do the single-leg balance exercise, start by shifting your weight toward one leg.

Then slowly lift the other leg up off of the floor.

Try to keep your pelvis at a 90-degree angle with your leg.

You don't want to allow your pelvis to drop down

Try to work up to holding this position for 10 seconds.

The ability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds or longer substantially decreases your risk of death within the next year.

Therefore, it's very important to improve your stability on one leg.

Now, if you can't do that just yet, it is okay to hold onto something—a counter, a bed, a cane, a walker—for a little bit of stability until you're able to stand on one leg without holding on.

Conclusion

So those are two exercises to strengthen your legs: the squat or sit-to-stand and  single-leg balance.

Remember, it is important to figure out what's causing your leg weakness in the first place before jumping straight into doing strengthening exercises.

Need Help For Weakness In Legs?

If you live in the St. Louis area and need help to improve your leg strength, we'd be happy to help you.

Just tap the button below to request an appointment with one of our specialist physical therapists.

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