“Be everything that is you,
Deep at the center of your being.”
-Confucius
Balance is the ability to maintain the center of gravity over the body’s base of support. When all forces acting upon the body are balanced, a state of equilibrium is achieved which is necessary for optimal functioning. Better balance is strongly associated with enhanced athletic performance and sport achievement in elite athletes, and negatively associated with sports injuries. Impaired balance is also the greatest threat to our aging population. The most recent CDC statistics report that adults over 65 suffer from a fall each year- 35 million falls with 8 million fall related injuries!
We are not born with balance, nor is it something we find. Rather it is an awareness and ability we must work to maintain through experience and training. Movement is the unifying bond between the mind and body, and sensations are the substance of that bond. To control balance, the nervous system integrates visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive information. This information is critical to produce motor commands to precisely coordinate activation patterns of muscles.
Proprioception is the ability to perceive and integrate sensory signals from mechanoreceptors located in muscles, tendons, joints, skin, and ears. These sensors deliver information relating to changes in position, movement, tension, force, and environment to the brain to thereby determine body position and movement in space. This perception, or body awareness, is relayed to and from the brain through the peripheral nervous system. The brain integrates this information to sense movement, location, and action to generate appropriate control for adjustments to postural stability. Dynamic postural stability provides the foundation for safe athletics and active living.
The specific skills acquired during balance training transfer to higher cognitive functions based on shared neural circuits. Incorporating balance tasks into exercise programs improves spatial cognition. Proprioception and balance deteriorate with age, injury, and disease, which contributes to the increased risk of falls. Fortunately, balance training and continued participation in exercise and athletics improves proprioceptive accuracy to not only stop, but to reverse the negative impact of aging and improve motor performance. Balance exercises are a key component of all successful injury prevention and rehabilitation programs and are a priority for health and wellbeing. Instability devices, medicine balls, and suspension devices are effective evidence-based balance training tools for reducing risk of injury, accelerating rehabilitation, and optimizing athletic performance. For more balance-boosting strategies, check out my award-winning book “Master Your Core”.