Improve Your Balance – Tips and Tricks from the Pros

All exercises don’t only deal with muscles reacting. A lot of times we deal with what’s called proprioception. And proprioception is your body’s ability of knowing where it is. It’s very important in balance. Whether you’re an elite athlete, or you’re an amateur athlete, or you’re just somebody who’s walking around a lot and find yourself off balance. What we do is we have a way of working with proprioception of standing on a really flexible pad to stimulate your brain in knowing where your body is.

So what we’re gonna do is go through a little bit of a routine that we use in getting your proprioception. And actually getting your brain tuned in with your body. And I have to tell you. It is not easy. And we’ll tie that in to even some of the shoulder stuff that we did or some of the exercises that we did.

Balance Routine

And one thing I start off with, I like doing this routine. Most people with any kind of back pain or any knee or ankle injuries. And you actually don’t even need a balance pad to start. Until you get into some really high levels of balance. What you can do is actually, if you just stand still and get up on one leg. You should be able to hold that position for at least a good minute. Once that’s pretty easy to do…

Wait, hold it. But to jump into that. Now also, what makes that even harder is if you close your eyes and do it. And then it becomes much, much harder. So that would be the next level. Because you’re changing the neurology of the brain when your eyes are closed off to that. So that’s taking it up to a second level on that.

Close Your Eyes

So as soon as you close your eyes you should be able to work up. And your balance will actually come along really, really fast if you do this. I actually like doing it when I brush my teeth. I have one of those two minute things. And if you can hold yours eyes closed through the whole two minutes, you’re pretty good.

A couple of balance tricks I’ll give you, one, you always wanna try to stay upright. Like lots of people will look down, but if you watch like a pro surfer or a pro skateboarder, when I start looking down, you see my center of gravity has kind of shifted. When I keep everything upright, it’s a lot easier to balance. And if I’m doing anything with my eyes open, I wanna focus on one point. Like kinda far away. And keep my focus there the entire time. So if I’m on one leg, I’m focusing all the way to that wall. And my head is straight and I can stand here all day long.

Now as soon as I close my eyes I lose that and it makes it a little bit harder. And you’ll find you work a lot of the little, tiny muscles in your ankles. And then, do you wanna demonstrate the next step once that’s pretty easy?

Balance Demonstration

No, because I will actually end up falling over. So I’m having Jane doing the demonstration on that.

So what you can do is you can hop on Amazon, whatever, and get any sort of balance pad. This happens to be one that the Sixers use in their locker room. But they make little half balls. And what it does, it’s just gonna make it a touch more wobbly. So if you hop on, even just standing now on one leg on that. Go ahead and stand on one leg. It’s gonna be pretty challenging. So you can see her shifting her weight around.

And what’s happening is the little, tiny muscles in that foot are figuring out where they are in space. So that as you’re walking along, say you trip and your foot slips off the curb. Your body’s gonna be able to catch itself now.

Yeah, it’s just a way in the neurology of the brain to make things work better and more efficiently. Once again, not a heavy stretch on it. This is more of a neurological arch change.

Final Pro Tip

And one other tip I can give you is this. If you are doing any of the band work. If that becomes a little too easy for you, you can actually hop on one of these. Go ahead and do any band stretch. Or, here, back it up this way. So you can hop onto one of these and just do any of the band work. It’s gonna make it that much more unstable and harder. And we can even hop on just one leg and do that. So I think it’s time for an eyes closed one-leg contest between the three of us. Ah, no. We’re not even, we’re not heading there. Because I will end up falling through your front window.

Thanks for reading our blog post. Hopefully you apply what you learned! For any more questions or to have your spine checked out by our doctor at Genesis Chiropractic Clinic in Horsham PA, call us at 215-343-3223. Or please Contact Us Here.