10 Standing Balance Exercises To Improve Balance and Stability
Standing balance exercises are very important for those who are looking to improve their day to day balance. Balance is rarely a physical attribute we think about progressing through applying stress, but improving balance can be extremely beneficial when recovering from a head injury or just as the ageing process begins.
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- Benefits of Training Balance
- The Relationship Between Falls and Ageing
- Athletic Ability
- Rehabilitation
- Principles of Training Balance
- Applying Appropriate Challenge
- Progressive Overload
- 10 Standing Balance Exercises To Improve Balance and Stability
Benefits of Training Balance
The Relationship Between Falls and Ageing
Falls among the elderly population are a very dangerous occurence. Not because the falls themselves create such severe injuries, though that is obviously an issue, but the lack of recovery from the injury sustained can often result in a very sedentary lifestyle which is the start of declining health metrics, including VO2max and strength metrics. This makes training balance for seniors an essential part of their physical training regime.
Athletic Ability
Balance is crucial to optimal athleticism in so many sporting events, from kickboxing to ballet, having exceptional balance will only be a huge advantage. That is why athletes are often trying to improve their balance as part of their physical conditioning routine, and rightly so.
Rehabilitation
Injuries including head, knee, ankle, hip etc can often result in a loss of balance. This is why training balance can be crucial to making a full recovery. The rehabilitation process can often be long and arduous, so it is important to make sure that proper strength and conditioning principles are being applied and sessions are written with the persons enjoyment and sustainability in mind.
Principles of Training Balance
Applying Appropriate Challenge
In this list of exercises you will see a huge variety in exercise difficulty. With balance exercises it is very important to not apply too much difficulty too early on. So pay a great deal of attention when doing the exercise selection for balance training. The goal is to apply enough challenge that the exercise can be performed with precision and control yet it is still hard enough to create an adaptation.
Progressive Overload
Once you have found an appropriate starting point of difficulty, then progressive overload will need to be successfully applied. This will involve making the exercise progressively more challenging over time to ensure that once the adaptation is made the stimulus gets increased. A practical example of this would be moving from a single arm farmers carry to a knee to chest walk. This would create an increase in stimulus in terms of the balance required to perform the exercise.
10 Standing Balance Exercises To Improve Balance and Stability
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This resource was written by Sean Klein. Sean Richard Klein has thousands of hours of coaching experience and a BSc in Sports Science with Management from Loughborough University. He owns a gym in Bayonne France, CrossFit Essor, which runs group classes and a Personal training studio.
Sean Klein
