NYMBL – Good for Balance and Your Brain

ACC has launched a free balance exercise app for smartphones called Nymbl. This app enables you to regularly do balance exercises, wherever you are, whenever you want, improving your balance, and enabling you to keep doing the things you love.

As our muscles and bones naturally weaken with age, many of us lose our balance skills, making falls more likely and injuries more severe. Sadly, one in three New Zealanders over the age of 65 will fall each year and this increases to one in two for people over 80. Falls are physically and emotionally very damaging and are a leading cause of decline among older people but there are lots of things you can do to limit your risk of falling.

One of the new initiatives from ACC is the Nymbl app – free to download and combines exercises for your body and your mind. They can be done in simple 10-minute sessions, a few times a week or as often as you like. Regular use of Nymbl has been shown to reduce the chances of falls by 30 percent and is a really simple way to improve strength and balance in your own home. As well as the strength and balance exercises, Nymbl has a number of memory and concentration games which help the brain.

Nymbl is available for both Android and Apple devices and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.