When thinking about what I will write about in this blog piece my thoughts went to what is an underrated and, in my opinion, underutilized exercise component… Balance! We all know balance becomes increasingly important as we age, I will discuss this, but I also want to dive into the importance of challenging your balance in any well-rounded exercise routine.

You may have read about or seen on numerous news programs that if you can balance on one leg for a certain amount of time your life expectancy increases. This is all well and good but in the end it’s a rather pointless statistic created to help support a theory. We all know the saying that you can prove anything with statistics if you try hard enough.

What I have found over my years of clinical experience is that balance exercises often prescribed are too easy and rather monotonous. They are categorized as ‘static’ balance exercises. What this means is you stand in a pre-determined position for a set amount of time (feet together, one foot in front, single leg). But what do you do when this becomes easy? Or when your abilities are beyond that of the static balance?

Now let’s introduce a term called ‘dynamic’ balance, this is where things become really challenging and my creative side as a clinician gets to take over. Dynamic balance is the ability to remain stable whilst performing movements that may displace one’s self. Whilst in a challenging balance position you can be throwing or bouncing a ball, or performing any upper limb exercise you can think of, you could also be walking across a slim beam or a balance designed obstacle course.

Many of the people I see will tell you that if they are rock solid in a balance exercise, I will make it harder. The whole point is to challenge yourself; the ‘wobble’ and corrective movements are exactly what I want to see happening.

Now why is this so important at every age? Balance can deteriorate quickly and like other aspects of health and fitness, balance skills can take a long time to improve once impairment has occurred. Balance should not be overlooked as an important aspect of any program. I will post a few videos and pictures of some of my personal favourites, not a lot of equipment required, just a creative mind and a willingness to really challenge yourself, safely of course.