6 Exercises for Better Balance ¦ Enhance Your Mind-Body Connection.

Hi, welcome. I'm coach Tanya here at Critical Bench, and this video today is called Six Exercises for Better Balance. So that's exactly what it is. I'm gonna show you six exercises that you can do at home, just about anywhere actually, that can help improve and support better balance. Now, balance isn't necessarily just an issue that happens with elderly people. I mean, as we get older, our balance does tend to become more of a challenge for us, but you can suffer with balance issues at almost any age. Myself, several years ago, I had an accident, so I've got nerve damage that really affects the one side of my body, particularly my right arm and hand and my right leg and foot. So I can go through periods of time, like a couple days or a couple weeks, where that is really flared up, and my balance is terrible. So balance exercises are something that I actually do include in my workouts, and on my rest days, I make sure to just do a few so that I'm always working on that. Okay, so for the six exercises, here's what you're gonna be doing. Sumo squat with a side leg lift, standing knee raises with under leg touch, curtsy lunge with side knee raises, plank with airplane arms, rolling forearms side plank, and a heel-raised dumbbell challenge. Okay, so just before we get started, a few things I wanna mention. You may need or want a chair. I have no idea where your balance is at, if it's something that you struggle with, or maybe you're rehabilitating after an injury. Maybe your balance is great, but you just wanna keep doing these kinds of exercises to continue to support really good balance. So have a chair handy in case you need one, and you're going to need, actually you don't have to, but you can have some light dumbbells. I just grabbed some little two-pound ones because this really isn't about the amount of weight we're moving, it's just about being able to include some extra weight because that then increases the challenge of doing the balance exercise. But you can also just work just with body weight today. So the first exercise is the sumo squat with a side leg lift. Now if you don't need the chair, let's tuck that out of the way. So a sumo squat, your feet are a little wider than shoulder-width apart. Toes are kind of at about a 45-degree angle. And a sumo squat is just going down into that deep squat, as deep as you are comfortable doing. You may not, now you might be able to do a really deep sumo, but for this exercise, you may wanna only go part of the way down because the second part of this move is as we come up, lifting our leg off the ground and holding for like two to three seconds, and then coming back down. Now, two options. You can do this as an alternating exercise, or if that, again, that is a little more tricky, especially if you have issues with balance. What you might wanna do if that's you is to just come down to that sumo, do the one leg, and just focus on one leg for 10. Keep that core engaged. Eight, nine, and this is 10. Now, you don't have to be too concerned with lifting your leg high off the floor. I know I probably had my toe pointed and stuff. That's all the years of dance training I've had. It just sort of happens by default. But if you're coming down into that squat, and you're only going to like there, that's fine because you still have to balance. You're still balancing on one leg. So whether your leg is here or here, that's okay. You can work up to a higher leg hold or not, okay? So if you just did the one leg, and you wanna do the same thing on the other side, you will probably, a lot of you may find that one side to the other, you notice some differences. This side's definitely harder for me because this is the foot and the leg where I struggle sometimes to have full feeling. So it can feel a little weird for me. Okay, and you would do 10 again on this side. So two ways to approach that, 10 one side, 10 the other, or alternating, but if you're alternating, you wanna count to 20 because you wanna make sure you get 10 per side, all right? So moving into the next exercise, we have a standing knee raise with an under leg touch. So what I didn't mention was, I'm doing these in sock feet. I do recommend sock feet or bare feet. It just allows your foot to be in full contact with the floor, which actually is better for you. It gives you a greater anchor, a more solid and stable base, and it also allows us to work on activating that peroneal nerve, which I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about at the end of the video, because I have a great product that you may be very interested in that's really gonna do amazing things to improve and support your balance. I do recommend sock feet or bare feet. You want a stable surface. I've got a relatively stable surface. These are kind of these foamy floor mats, but they're pretty firm, so I'm not too worried here. So the standing knee raise with an under leg touch. Whichever side you wanna start with, you're just gonna pick that knee up. You're gonna bring your hands up and down, just like that. See if you can do that 10 times. One more, that was 10. Now, that's actually a long time to stand on one leg. I had my knee up fairly high. Again, if this is where you have good balance and you're not quite coming under your leg, that's fine. You're still bringing those arms up and down and moving them, so that's adding a challenge to that balance exercise. If 10 under the leg touches is too much and you find you're just wobbling and falling, rather than get frustrated, do alternating. So one leg up, do a touch, reset. Other leg, touch and reset. And if you would consider yourself a beginner or beginner level with balance, I do recommend doing alternating side to side. Again, you wanna do like 20, so doing 10 with each leg, make sure you're counting 20 total if you choose to do the alternate. Now, if you want to, if you need some support doing that one, you can certainly do it using the chair, lifting your leg up and just going up and reaching down. And that may be where you start, and that is absolutely fine. Then you wanna switch to the other side. You're gonna hold the chair and do the same thing with the other leg. So if you need the chair, please use the chair because we don't want anybody falling and getting hurt. For the curtsy lunge with the knee raise, again, you can use the chair if you need to for support. If you're gonna use the chair, you're gonna do everything on one leg before switching to the other leg. So again, with most of these, there's options. You can do all one leg for 10, switch to the other leg for 10, or you can alternate counting up to 20. I'm gonna show you a few of these, doing them alternating, okay, to show you how it's done. So you want your feet about shoulder width a little bit more apart. We're gonna go down into that curtsy lunge. If you're not sure what that is, you just bring one leg back and you bend your knees. So you're coming down, it's like a curtsy, okay? So we're going into that curtsy lunge. As we come up, we're gonna bring this knee up to the side. Okay, and you may have to stop and reset. That's a lot that's moving in this plane, then shifting to one-legged support. So there's a lot going on, and if you need to stop and reset, absolutely stop and reset. You can go back and do nine more with that leg, stopping and resetting, okay? Curtsy lunge, up, reset, okay, before switching to the other side. You may find it easier to do the alternating again, and you still wanna stop and reset. So if I'm gonna do them alternating, so I'm gonna move this a little bit. If I choose to do them alternating, I'm gonna come down to that curtsy, and I'm gonna come up, then reset. Curtsy, come up, and reset. Wanna make sure we do 10 on each side, okay? The next exercise takes us to the floor. Do that again. And this is a plank with what I call airplane arms, all right? So you're going to go into a extended plank, so that means we're not gonna be on our forearms for this. We're gonna be on our palms, palms below our shoulders, okay? Out in plank, whether your feet are together or spread out, that doesn't matter, okay? This is a really good core engagement exercise as well. So what we're gonna do, we're just gonna go from four points to three, and it's called airplane arms because you go out, side, down. Out, side, down. While maintaining balance. Because once you go from four points to three, now your body has to shift to accommodate having one less support for it, okay? So again, that one I do actually recommend just switching arms, because if you don't do a lot of planks, if you don't have great upper body strength, your shoulder's gonna get really, really sore. So you wanna, again, wanna make sure we're doing 10 airplane arms on each side. So you're gonna wanna count to 20, which would look like this. So this is one, that's two, three, four. And you keep doing that till you hit your 20 and you're done and you did a great job. For this next exercise, we're gonna stay on the floor and we're going to do a style of plank. We're gonna do a side plank. So if you're familiar with a side plank, a side plank just looks like this, okay? Feet stacked, forearm down, shoulder in line with the elbow and hold, okay? But we're gonna add a little bit of movement. I mean, that is a great exercise. If you get into that position and you find you're falling or wobbling, you might just wanna practice on really nailing the side plank. I have days where I come in the gym here and I actually have to, because I've heard about it in the comments, that when I do a side plank, I actually have to put this hand down because I have very little to no feeling in that forearm, so while I can see it on the mat, I can't really feel my arm hitting the mat and that's kind of trippy, to be honest with you. So sometimes I do that. So if you're struggling with a side plank, make sure you get that, okay? This may be an exercise that you come to later on as your balance gets better. So we're gonna go from a side plank and this is called a rolling forearm side plank. So we're gonna start on one side and then roll to the other side and then roll back. And just 10 total of these because it is a little more challenging of an exercise to do. So we're gonna get into side plank, so feet are stacked, forearm and palm on the floor. Get up into that side plank and then we're just gonna roll and shift to the other side and hold. And then roll and shift. Roll and shift. And you wanna do 10 of these total. One thing I will suggest or recommend is that when you roll, if you start on your right, you roll to the left. If when you get into that left side plank, you're wobbling, don't try to roll right away. I do see people that if they're wobbling and struggling, they wanna roll right out of it and get to the other side and just kind of keep going. That really doesn't do a whole lot to help your balance. What I would say is this. Do that roll. If you're wobbling, just try to get steady, as steady as you can. If you have to kind of drop down and then go back into that plank, that's fine. But don't keep moving with that momentum, like I can't, I'm wobbling, so I'm just gonna keep going until I get 10 done. Work on getting that steady side plank before rolling to the other side. And if it takes you a little bit of time, that's okay. For the last exercise I wanna show you, we're gonna have to get back up on the floor. And this one's actually quite a bit of fun. This is where you will bring in dumbbells or weight. Maybe soup cans will work too. If you've got soup cans, you can hold. If you would rather not use any added weight, that's fine. This works just as great with body weight. Because again, it's about balancing, it's not about the weight, it's about balancing. But adding weight just increases the challenge. So if your balance is, you feel it's really good, grab some dumbbells. If you're still working on getting good, solid, basic body weight balance, no dumbbells. Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna get into a heel raise position. So I'm just gonna lift my heels off the floor, but we're gonna bend our knees. So we're gonna be in this position, okay? And in this position, whether you're using dumbbells or not, you're gonna arms by the side, okay? Core engaged, head neutral. You're gonna curl, extend up, out to the side, and down. Curl, extend up, out to the side, and down. How that looks with dumbbells or soup cans is this. So heels up, get steady there. Curl, up, out, and down. So this is all just one. That's one, two, three, okay, and so forth. The goal for that is 10. If you have to stop, if you have to stop and get your heels on the ground to go back into it, that is okay, because wherever you're at with your balance is where you're at. The goal of these exercises is to help improve it and also better support optimal balance. Okay, so those are those six exercises to help improve your balance, six exercises for better balance. Now, you don't have to do all of those together. You can pick and choose a few that you really like and work on those, and as you get really good at those, include more or just switch it up. Again, these can be done during a workout session. They can be done on rest days. They can be done in your office. They can be done at home, so pick a couple. Aim for those 10 reps, and I would really suggest whichever ones you choose, repeating them three times, like you would if you were doing a normal, if it was part of a workout, so many, 10 reps for three rounds, just three times through, just so you're really working on improving that balance. Now, if you found these really good and you want more or you know that balance is something that's a concern for you, it's becoming more of an issue and it's something that you want to work at, because honestly, it's something that all of us, at any age, really need to be very aware of. It's not okay to wait till you're older and things are starting to, some of the strength has gone. Eyesight is a little bit compromised. Therefore, our balance and proprioception becomes compromised as well, because the risk of fall increases as we get older, and the less we do to support better balance only adds to that risk level, so one of the things that is the cause of that is in the bottom of our foot, we have a nerve. It's called the peroneal nerve, which at one point in time, when people walked around a lot more barefoot, that nerve gets activated. When your barefoot is hitting the ground, that nerve gets activated, because it's in contact with another surface, unlike nowadays, where we pretty much wear shoes everywhere, so that nerve becomes almost, I won't say it's dead, because it doesn't die, but it becomes very inactive, and that is one of the keys in what's affecting balance today, so I would like you to check the pinned comment below. We just developed here, Coach Chris, the NeuroBalance Therapy Program. This is an amazing program full of balance-specific exercises. They are specific flows of movements in a specific order to really, really improve and support amazing balance. It goes from beginner level, works up to more advanced level, so as your balance improves, you can do more. Now, when you click on that pinned comment below, you'll go to the page, and you can get the DVD. You can also get the digital download, and you get the free spike ball that comes with it, because this is a key element in this whole program. I talked about that peroneal nerve in the bottom of your foot. You need one of these for this program to give you the amazing results that it is guaranteed to do, so please make sure, check that pinned comment below, get the product, get your free ball, and get much better, more amazing balance for optimal living. If you like the video, please give it a thumbs-up. Makes me feel good, and don't forget to click that subscription button and that notification bell so you never miss any of our great video content. I'm Coach Tonya. Have a great day.