 Never give up, never ever give up!"  | |
Why is balance so important? Balance is something that most of us take for granted. Not even thinking how fortunate you are, being able to walk across the room until your ability to balance is gone. Balance is vital to any sport that you'll play and even important to any walk you'll take. It is the combination of muscles firing and neural signals being processed correctly in your body. You must have the neuromuscular efficiency, muscular strength and endurance to maintain balance in just about everything you do in your daily routine.
Nueromuscular efficiency is a just a fancy word that describes your nervous system's (brain and spine) ability to relay and interpret signals it receives from your muscular system. When I begin a workout program with a new client, it is important to work on their balance before you move to exercises that are performed on several different planes of motion. For example, I will have a client balance themselves on one foot while doing bicep curls. This allows them to activate more muscle and ultimately, burn more calories rather than just have them stand on both feet while performing the curls. Also, as the weight/load travels up and down, so will your center of gravity shift forcing them to work on balance. You can use this principle in just about every exercise in any routine. I call this getting "100 pennies on the dollar", maximizing every second in the gym to burn calories and strengthen the body. Balance is also vital to progression in your workout program. As you become stronger, your exercise routine will need constant adjusting in order to continue to challenge you. You will begin to do exercises that will place a greater demand on your balance while lifting weight/load and it is imperative that you are able to balance yourselves during these movements, otherwise injury is imminent. As your exercise increase in difficulty, your balance should respond positively to the added difficulty.
Try to balance on one foot for 20 seconds. If you can do this on your left and then the right, the progression would be to close your eyes and try to balance on each leg for 20 seconds. For those balance savants, the next progression would be to continue to keep your eyes closed, but turn your head slowly from one side and then the other for 20 seconds.
Working out is not necessarily a part of your everyday life, but your health surely is. Stay healthy!
Nueromuscular efficiency is a just a fancy word that describes your nervous system's (brain and spine) ability to relay and interpret signals it receives from your muscular system. When I begin a workout program with a new client, it is important to work on their balance before you move to exercises that are performed on several different planes of motion. For example, I will have a client balance themselves on one foot while doing bicep curls. This allows them to activate more muscle and ultimately, burn more calories rather than just have them stand on both feet while performing the curls. Also, as the weight/load travels up and down, so will your center of gravity shift forcing them to work on balance. You can use this principle in just about every exercise in any routine. I call this getting "100 pennies on the dollar", maximizing every second in the gym to burn calories and strengthen the body. Balance is also vital to progression in your workout program. As you become stronger, your exercise routine will need constant adjusting in order to continue to challenge you. You will begin to do exercises that will place a greater demand on your balance while lifting weight/load and it is imperative that you are able to balance yourselves during these movements, otherwise injury is imminent. As your exercise increase in difficulty, your balance should respond positively to the added difficulty.
Try to balance on one foot for 20 seconds. If you can do this on your left and then the right, the progression would be to close your eyes and try to balance on each leg for 20 seconds. For those balance savants, the next progression would be to continue to keep your eyes closed, but turn your head slowly from one side and then the other for 20 seconds.
Working out is not necessarily a part of your everyday life, but your health surely is. Stay healthy!
