The ability to balance

Balance is one of the those essential skills that enhances all of our movement.  The ability to balance is within us but like most things if you don't use it you lose it.  As we age we tend to move less and more slowly thus inadequately taxing our balance systems.  No problem, right?  Not so.  We use our balance systems everyday but the sedentary modern lifestyle taxes it very little opening us up for imbalance injuries.

The two most common examples of everyday balance is:
   -Walking - during the gait cycle you spend almost 50% of time on one leg

   -Standing up - the act of getting up requires a complex neurological system to keep you upright

During all movement your brain is bombarded by millions of ultra fast messages from your joints about their location.  Your brain takes this data and delivers it to the surrounding stabilizing muscles and soft tissues to keep you upright.  Muscles are stupid.  Your body does not know from individual muscles, it only knows movement patterns.  These patterns literally have millions of interactions every second that preserve our equilibrium and keep us from falling on our butts.   Furthermore these interactions can become compensations, stabilization, faulty movement patterns, efficient movements or a combination of them.  Balance training (aka neuromuscular adaptation training) serves a multilayered purpose:

         1- Helps prevent injury
         2- Teaches or re-teaches structural and functional efficiency
         3- Good calorie burning modality due to the global neural demand
         4- Enhances everyday movement
         5- Strengthens the core musculature and increases its efficiency
         6- Improves your posture and neuromuscular spinal stabilizers.

If we all moved as much as our great ancestors, we would not have as many dysfunctions, weight problems and balance issues.  Since we don't, it is important to counteract modernity's negative forces and train our body to adapt to it's primal framework.  Most of the surfaces we live on are flat with little irregularity.  Our bodies crave change and movement and our homogenous motion starved environment breeds joint degradation, arthritis and overall dysfunction.  I am glad I don't live in the jungle barefoot but that lifestyle utilizes the body the way it has evolved to work.  Modern hunter gathers suffer from a lot less disease and dysfunction then their urban counterparts (many reasons for this).  Our bodies should be challenged on a regular basis in all three planes of motion with our balance and proprioceptive systems working on high.  Some easy things you can do:

        1- Stand on one leg while brushing your teeth
        2- Walk on uneven surfaces often (beach, hiking etc)
        3- Utilize balance tools in your workouts  (Bosu, physio ball, wobble board etc)
        4- Use cardio machines like the step-mill or elliptical without holding on
        5- Practice a martial art or tai chi
        6- Play a sport on a regular basis
        7- Stand on the subway without holding on (be careful!)

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