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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Zoe Williams

Touch your toes! Six fast, easy ways to improve your mobility – and live a longer life

Flexi-time … sit cross-legged, hang by your hands, stand on one leg and touch your toes to improve  mobility.
Flexi-time … sit cross-legged, hang by your hands, stand on one leg and touch your toes to improve mobility. Composite: Getty images / Shutterstock

Remember the mobility challenge that went viral last year? It goes like this. You’re standing up; you can’t use your hands, so start by crossing your arms across your body. Cross one leg in front of the other. Drop down to sit cross-legged on the floor. From here, get on your knees with your toes behind you. Now pop backwards into a deep squat, the one where your butt is against your heels. Now stand up.

It’s hard, right? Most people can’t do it. And yet you can’t afford to ignore this stuff. Poor mobility can greatly affect your quality of life, making everything from washing yourself to cleaning your home difficult or painful. And, although it may not kill you, it is certainly correlated with early death.

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