Improve Your Balance on Total Gym
Balance…If You Don’t Use It – You’ll Lose It!
Improve Your Balance on Total Gym
Hey Total Gym team! It’s Master Trainer JayDee here with a quick quiz to kick off this informative blog:
Is losing your balance a natural part of aging?Is becoming less physically stable as we age something we should just accept?Isn’t there something we can do to thwart the loss of balance and even improve it?
If you answered:
A little… but mainly NOHell NO!And an emphatic YES!
…to those three questions, you’re going to love this blog and vlog.
Here’s the deal, team:
As we age, there are a few balance-related factors that can degrade over time, such as vision and nerve reaction speed. But for the most part, the reason most people’s balance declines with age is simple—as people get older, they stop doing things that challenge their balance.
Does that make sense? Hence the adage in the title of this blog:
“If you don’t use it — you’ll lose it!”
Yep—if your primary activity is sitting around eating bonbons and binging Netflix all day, your balance is going to suffer. Your joints will stiffen. The muscles that support your skeleton will atrophy and weaken. And the parts of your brain needed for good balance will become duller.
But not my Total Gym peeps!
You’re keeping your muscles strong with consistent workouts. You’re keeping your tendons, joints, and ligaments lubricated. And if you add in exercises that challenge your balance—like the ones you’ll experience in this video—your body and brain will stay sharp. And yes, you can actually improve your balance.
Losing your balance as you get older can be a serious issue—sometimes even fatal. You’ve probably heard the story many times: an older adult falls, breaks a hip, ends up in the hospital, and never makes it home for various reasons. All because they stopped doing activities that maintained their balance.
On the other side of that bleak coin, I’ve seen adults in their 70s and 80s performing impressive balance poses in yoga classes I attend. My meditation mentor is now in her late 80s and loves doing headstands. No, she’s not a circus freak—she simply challenges her balance every day by staying active and practicing yoga. On a whim, she’ll just pop up into a headstand. It’s comical—and awesome.
Now it’s time to check out the video and learn three vital components to keeping your balance sharp:
1. Challenging Your Vestibular System
This is the part of your inner ear that helps you maintain balance, posture, and your sense of motion. It tells your brain where your head is and how it’s moving—even when your eyes are closed.
2. Adding Instability to Progress Your Balance
I show examples of how to gradually layer in instability to increase your balance challenge. Your body craves homeostasis and is always searching for stability. As soon as you “rock that stability boat,” your brain and body kick in to keep you from falling.
Bonus: Your core musculature fires automatically to help make this happen.
3. Using Unilateral Arm & Leg Movements
Once again, we create more instability to increase the balance challenge—keeping your body and brain balance-ready.
Bonus: This balance series also doubles as a great leg workout!
Thanks, TG Team! Keep the questions and comments coming. I love this stuff, and I’m here to help.
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