Fitness industry workers once emphasized cardiovascular conditioning, flexibility and muscle tone, strength and endurance. The balance buzz began in the mid-1990s when stability balls and balance boards rolled and wobbled their way into health clubs and fitness studios. As fitness enthusiasts experimented with these new gym toys, they discovered what helps and what hinders the body's ability to maintain balance.
The Core
In 1996, University of Queensland physical therapist Paul Hodges revolutionized fitness and injury prevention theories with his research on the deeper core muscles, particularly the muscle called the transversus abdominus. This spinal stabilizer plays a key role in balance.
Hodges discovered that people free of back problems intuitively activated their deep core muscles before any type of movement. In contrast, people with chronic back pain had a delayed core muscle activation, meaning that they began each movement in a state of spinal instability.
Posture
The idiomatic expression "he doesn't have his head on straight" implies emotional imbalance. If your head, or any other part of your body is misaligned, it can trigger physical imbalance. The word balance describes your body's ability to keep your center of gravity over your base of support. Posture describes the alignment of each of your body's segments. Postural misalignment rearranges your body's segments, making it difficult to keep your center of gravity over your base of support. Habitual positions, muscular imbalances and unconscious mimicking of a parent's posture may cause the misalignment that impedes balance.
Proprioception
When you step on a sheet of ice or a child's toy, your ability to identify and react to the changing surface beneath your feet determines whether you will recover and remain upright or fall down. This awareness of your body's position and the space that surrounds it is called proprioception. Injuries such as ankle sprains reduce proprioception and trigger a pattern of repetitive injuries to the same ankle. Therapy for sprained ankles involve proprioceptive training.
Balance Exercise
Your sense of balance erodes with age, according to the "Harvard Health Letter," but balance and proprioceptive exercises help you maintain equilibrium and minimize the detrimental effects of a balance deficit. Balance, like any other aspect of fitness, works on a use it or lose it principle. Correcting muscular imbalances in the hamstrings and quadriceps, chest and back, and hip flexors and gluteal muscles, along with performing balance board and stability ball exercises can improve your current balance and delay age-related balance losses.
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