We usually think of fitness in terms of cardiovascular efficiency, strength, and flexibility; but balance is something that we could not live without and that we all take for granted. Balance is always at the centre of every sport and activity and holds our bodies upright and steady. Proprioception is the ability of your body to interpret and use information about your position. Through a complex system of translating cues from your brain to the bottom of your feet, the relation of your inner ear to gravity and visual cues, your body senses which muscles to switch on or off to maintain your desired position.

We have been practising balance since infancy, so it occurs easily for us and we depend on it unconsciously. But if your body’s adaptation to balance should be disrupted by injury, you will realise the extent to which you need good balance. Fortunately, good balance can be improved with practice; it can develop coordination, athletic skill and posture, resulting in fewer injuries and greater stability as we age. Running and weight training will bring increased kinesthetic awareness and efficiency to the rest of your workouts, and will improve the effectiveness and safety of your overall training.

THE HUMAN BODY – A HIGHLY SOPHISTICATED MACHINE

Our bodies use three internal control systems to help maintain balance (and thus stability) throughout any athletic movement. These three centres are our eyes, our ears, and our nervous system. This system of balance is a very powerful and accurate control mechanism, unless the channel of communication between any of these three internal control systems is broken or disrupted. A corporal injury, vision impairments, ear infections and even ageing can have a deleterious effect on our balance, but there are ways that we can improve your body’s equilibrium by introducing balance training into our fitness routine.

VISUAL CUES

Just knowing which way is up and which way is down is something our eyes supply to our brains every second they are open. If you want to see how important your visual system is to balance, close your eyes and stand on one leg. Not so easy to stand upright any more, is it? Good vision allows our brains to make appropriate adjustments in our body’s posture and muscle tone, and allows us to maintain perfect balance and rhythm.

THE INNER EAR

The inner ear has fluid deep inside that acts like a level used in construction. When our heads move from side to side, so does the fluid. This is called your vestibular system. If you have ever experienced vertigo or dizziness from an inner ear infection, this system has been temporarily shut down or the brain is getting poor information due to inflammation in the inner ear.

THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM (CNS)

To understand how the body relies on our CNS to maintain balance, go ahead and put your hand behind your back. You don’t have to look or use a mirror to know that your hand is behind your back; you can feel it. The joints in your hands and fingers all have tiny nerve endings and special receptors called proprioceptors that act as your body’s own internal GPS system. We know that our hand is behind our back because those proprioceptors are telling our brains the exact position and orientation of our body parts every millisecond of our lives. This can be referred to as our “Feel Balance”.

It is this ‘feel’ or kinesthetic awareness that allows athletes to control balance, timing, rhythm, and performance. This ‘Feel balance’ is what the best of the best have developed so well. Players like Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods all seem to have unbelievably heightened touch and feel. This all begins with their completely balanced nervous system.

REPAIRING IMBALANCE CAUSED FROM INJURIES

Receptors are very susceptible to damage with injury or disuse. For example, you might notice that is harder for you to stand on one leg versus the other. This is probably due to an old sprained ankle or damaged knee that also has caused damage to the proprioceptors in that area. The good news is that these receptors can be retrained or repaired with proper exercises. Proprioceptive Retraining Exercises consist of training the muscles in the same way that you would normally do, but in an unstable environment, in order to awaken the damaged proprioceptors.

Stand with your feet in a line with heel to toe contact, and close your eyes. If you can maintain your balance for 30 seconds, that’s pretty good. If you’re wobbling right from the start, your baseline balance ability is poor. A good Proprioceptive Retraining Exercise would be to try the same thing standing on a foam roller, one foot in front of the other. This takes a lot more practice, but is a good way to develop and retrain your body’s ability to balance itself.

ADD BALANCE TRAINING TOOLS TO YOUR WORKOUTS

A great way to burn more calories without changing things around too much is to add balance training to your fitness programme. Unstable environments can be created with any of the following training tools: Stability balls, Foam Rollers, Airex Pads, Wobble Boards, Bosu balls, Gliding discs, and Slide Boards.

Use Gliding Discs for Basic Exercises. Standing on the discs to do squats, overhead dumbbell presses, or dumbbell curls, challenges the body’s core to stay centred. Standing on discs while doing basic moves works the stabilisers like the inner thigh, glute and ab muscles which increases calorie burning and toning. If you’re more advanced you can move forward into a lunge or reverse lunge on the disc which makes leg workouts much tougher without added weight. You can also use the discs for push-ups and for planks by placing your hands or your feet on them you get a lot more core interaction and burn more calories. This is what is called functional training, a combination of multiple muscle group recruitment in the one move.

Use Wobble Boards for Throwing Exercises. Stand on any wobble board and practise light-weight medicine ball throws with a partner. You can also perform upper-body chopping or swinging-type exercises on your own. This improves stability of all load-bearing joints while engaging the core, and increases calorie burning in a big way since your body is working hard on many types of movement.

Use Gliding Discs for Ab & Glute Exercises. Get into a push-up position and place feet on gliding discs then perform a circuit of planks, mountain climbers, knee-ins, and side-to-side gliding. This type of ab workout is somewhat more effective than plain old crunches. You can also lie on your back and place heels on the gliding discs and perform bridges, leg curls, and Pilates-oriented inner and outer thigh moves. With gliding discs you can target areas of your abs and lower body that may get neglected with regular training.

USE YOGA TO BALANCE YOUR CENTRE

The mountain pose or Tadasana in Yoga is a simple way to get connected to your centre and improve your balance through your own awareness. It essentially involves simply standing in an upright position, but the countless cues bring awareness to all the points of balance and stability within the body’s centres, and practising the pose improves posture, strengthens thighs, and can help to relieve back pain. It may seem like you are just standing there, but bringing the body into alignment is hard work.

Staying in touch with your body involves listening to its every move, caring for it and training it to support you throughout all stages of life, which should be your primary goal for a truly happy body.