Mobility Training

Research summary

• Mobility-focused exercise has meta-analytic support across several populations: ankle and foot exercises improve strength, balance and reduce falls in older people, and structured exercise improves strength, balance and mobility in people with cognitive impairment or dementia and in multiple sclerosis.
• A Cochrane review supports manual therapy and exercise for restoring shoulder mobility in frozen shoulder specifically.
• In hospital settings, a meta-analysis found early in-hospital mobilization improves outcomes for medically admitted patients, and exergame-based approaches show meta-analytic support for improving walking capacity in older adults.
• Dose-response meta-analyses of resistance training in healthy older adults provide complementary evidence that structured, regular movement training supports functional capacity generally.
• This is a genuinely broad, cross-population evidence base rather than a single unified literature, so effect sizes and applicability vary by population and condition.