I call balance in my classes the good medicine or a necessary evil that most of you hate doing, but something that is good for you and is a necessity as you get older.
Balance is a key component to your full rounded fitness, alongside strength, endurance, flexibility and core strength.
A lot of people get annoyed with themselves because balance never seems to get easier, but think of it like this - if you wanted to build up your biceps, you wouldn't expect perfect, big healthy biceps after 2 minutes of training them once a week for six weeks would you? No. This is why you need to be practising balance every day.
Benefits of improving your balance;
➡ Joint stability - Joint stability in your ankles, knees, hips and shoulders. This can help prevent an array of injuries, including ankle sprains and serious knee injuries
➡ Co ordination and body awareness - Practising balance will help to improve your co ordination. When you balance, your whole body works together as one, which will improve co ordination in all your everyday tasks.
➡ Reaction time - When you balance you will notice your foot moving a lot. This is good! This is your proprioceptors sending information from your foot to your brain, telling it to re balance. So basically the health of your proprioceptors is key to the quality of your reaction time
➡ Long term health - As we age this reaction time slows down, which is something you want to work at to avoid. This can prevent future falls and fractures. So by doing balance exercises, by training them, you are training those neuo pathways to the brain. Which is good!
If you're 50 now, reading this and thinking that you are well away from the age of falls, well now is the perfect time to start training your proprioceptors.
What you can do on a daily basis?
1. Whilst making a cup of tea or brushing your teeth..
2. Stand on one leg
3. Come up onto your tiptoes
4. Walk heel to toe
5. Simply shift your weight from side to side, bringing your foot up off the ground and inch
6. Raise one leg behind - arms extended in front