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Why Balance?
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We all admire the sportsmen or women who make everything they do look simple and easy and totally effortless. How many times have we described someone as looking 'poised and balanced'. We take it for granted that you either have natural balance or you don't. We train for speed, endurance, strength, yet how many of us have ever incorporated 'balance' into our training? People who have had balance training feel more graceful and have better posture.
Proprioception, or 'position sense', is the brain's way of assessing how the body is positioned and then processing information in order to get the body into the next position - hopefully quickly enough. Any time you get thrown off balance is an instant when the brain is challenged to rapidly relay information to the conscious and subconscious nervous system. Proprioceptors give us a sense of where our bodies are in space. If your brain isn't adept at this process, or your muscles are tired, you fall. Your body doesn't react the way you want to and the risk of injury increases. Tiredness, decreases your ability to balance. Sports like football, netball, soccer, basketball, tennis which require a lot of stability in the knee and ankle region will benefit from balance training. Balance training is often used in rehabilitation but can also be useful to 'prehabilitate' or avoid injury, as your body will learn how to land in the appropriate way. The crucial thing is that we can learn to balance and we can train our brain to be better at proprioception. Our sense of balance begins to decline at a round the age of 25. Yet we probably don't do anything about it. Balance can be learnt, challenged and improved. Changing your centre of gravity to match your moves is the key to efficiency. We can train our bodies to improve the proprioception within the muscles, just by creating balance challenges for ourselves. Vew-Do Balance Boards provide that challenge! |
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rights reserved: Text/images copyright © 2001 by Oakley
Brothers International |
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Balance is a part of everyday life.
The simple act of walking, which we take for granted, requires our brain
to recruit muscles to work, transfer weight and energy from one part of
the body to another, a very complex process.
