Many clients want to, or are told to, work on their balance as if it is some mysterious aspect of fitness that can be improved by closing your eyes and standing on one leg and repeating this as often as possible. My experience and my belief is that this is a total waste of time and an exercise in frustration. If you want to improve your balance, you must improve your STRENGTH!
All of those little muscles in our feet and calves to say nothing of the bigger muscles in our upper thighs and especially our glutes (aka ‘ASS’) need strengthening, fine tuning and training to improve balance. If you can’t stand on one leg on the floor, for heaven’s sake don’t go stand on a BOSU ball or any wobble board. Those Toys are for people who want more challenge – who are bored standing around on one leg like a flamingo. If your body is just randomly firing muscles so that you don’t fall down, your balance won’t improve. BUT, if you find exercises that tire out your leg and foot muscles, your body will get stronger and your balance will improve.
In our studio, we regularly do one legged squats to help build that strength. Some people use the wall to help them balance, some people don’t. Some people do it on a foam roller and some people hold weights in their hand. But they all feel muscular fatigue. And muscular fatigue means muscle strength and muscular strength means better balance
