Three Exercises To Improve Balance & Stability

Happy Saturday all, I'm sure many of you will be passing this over while you enjoy that morning cup of coffee. For those that take the time to stop and read this quickie, thanks for doing so and I hope you enjoy.

We all know that balance is important in life in general, let alone in things like recovering from a lower body injury. Many of us have struggled with gaining balance and stability after such an injury. With those, usually comes a ton of physical therapy and retraining of the movements you lost. Unfortunately most people lean way too heavily on things like, unstable surface training, to regain and/or maintain balance and stability. Unstable surface has a place in PT, that's OK, it's the rest of the professionals out there leaning on similar training that I'm sure can do better. As a side note, the bosu ball is one of my mortal enemies. If you in fact find me working out of a facility that has a boss ball in it, just assume I’ve been taken against my will and that I need to be rescued.

Here are three exercises that you will see way better results from, in terms of improved balance and stability, as opposed to continuing to smash your nose into a brick wall with “unstable surface” training.

Single Leg Standing Battle Ropes: Definitely jacked this from someone, might have been Ingrid Marcum. In either case, it’s easy, grab yourself a rope and stand on one leg. You can do side to side like I’m doing, you can use two ropes and do that too, or you can do your regular rope waves that your use to. In either case, your joints are going to be worked to keep you from falling on your backside. Did I mention it works everything untestable surface claims it’s doing.
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Single Leg RDL Switches: Again, not my own idea, I’ve forgotten where I’ve sniped this from, sorry. Anyway, assuming you’ve mastered a Single Leg or 1-leg RDL, this next progression is going to challenge that stability. Perform a 1-Leg RDL, I like to keep the KB in the opposite hand of my standing leg. At the bottom of said RDL, pass the KB between your hands, back and forth, then stand up. I’ve also seen variations where the exercise is to hold that bottom position and pass the KB back and forth a number of times. In either case, the toughest part, besides not tumbling over, will be to keep your hips still.

Standing Clamshells: Pretty sure this one I said Matt Ibrahim do? Maybe I’m misremembering, in either case, again, not an exercise that’s my brain child. This one obviously is targeting those side bum muscles, but still you have to work to not eat the floor. Start in an athletic stance, pick a foot off the ground and abduct those legs, working on squeezing those outer backside muscles. You will be wobbly so take your time.

These aren't the only three I would use, but they are the ones that have found their ways in to more programs than other so that's why I chose them to share with you.

Find these and more in No Pain Train-Online Training grab your spot today. deadline in this Monday December 17th!