Strength in Balance: Innovative Techniques to Enhance Stability and Prevent Injuries

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We require a stable sense of balance to successfully execute every movement of daily life, from standing to walking, cycling to raking leaves, getting out of bed, and even reaching for an item on a top kitchen shelf. A strong body will facilitate good posture; balance training focuses upon strengthening the very muscles that serve to keep us upright. Personal trainers can work with clients to cultivate a better sense of balance, improving their stability and helping to prevent falls/injuries.

Start with the Basics

Balance and stability, as we most likely have observed in our older clientele, tend to deteriorate with age. Some of the contributing factors remain within our loci of control, but sadly, not all of them, such as genetics.  The loss of strength and bone mass that accompany more sedentary individuals into their “golden years” contributes greatly to a deteriorating sense of balance.

According to a 2022 study which appeared in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, individuals over the age of 50 who lack the ability to stand on one foot for 10 seconds have twice the death risk from any cause within the next decade than their stronger cohorts. Furthermore, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends neuromotor exercise (also known as functional fitness) for older adults, two to three days a week. These neuromotor training programs might ideally include skills such as agility, coordination, balance and gait.

Posture, Core and Balance

Good posture plays a vital role in maintaining the body’s balance and stability. Slouched shoulders and/or a rounded back may over time lead to muscle imbalances, back pain, and difficulty maintaining stability during movement.  Strengthening the core, including the pelvic muscles, aids in supporting the spine.

Several simple moves can help clients striving to improve posture:

• Neutral Spine Alignment: Focus on maintaining a straight spine, keeping neck, torso, and hips in alignment.
• Core/Back Strengthening: Planks, bridges, and rows will foster muscular strength in the core and back, enabling one to more easily maintain proper posture.
• Awareness: Paying attention to posture throughout the day, whether sitting, standing, or walking, helps ensure that the chin remains parallel to the floor while shoulders remain relaxed and “tucked into back pockets”.

Stability Begins with Proprioception

The term proprioception, or kinesthesia, refers to the body’s ability to constantly assess/sense its position in space. Any time the body moves, especially along an uneven surface,

proprioception plays a key role in fostering stability and balance. This sense relies on unique receptors within muscles and joints that send specific signals to the brain.

With consistent strength training, the body learns to stimulate these receptors, creating a continual feedback loop between muscle and brain. Over time, this serves to empower the neural pathways responsible for balance, cultivating greater posture stability.

Stability exercises focus on major muscle groups, such as the deltoids, core, hips, and knees, what experts refer to as the “stabilizer muscles.” These bolster the core and extremities throughout movements, but do not qualify as the primary “mover” of an exercise. The muscle groups that fall into the “mover” category include quads, glutes, and hips in a squat, for instance. When executing a squat, for example, the stabilization comes from the smaller muscles around the knees, as well as the abs and erector spinae muscles located in the back.

Harnessing this capability can help a client, or an athlete, adjust to movement or directional changes. We can offer the following exercises to individuals who aim to improve their proprioception, often as it relates to their chosen sport ~

• Single-Leg Stands: Challenges balance by forcing the supporting leg to cultivate stability as well as strength and, ultimately, balance.
• Side-to-Side Hops: Jumping laterally from one foot to the other helps adapt to rapid changes in body position.
• Planks and Lunges: Cultivating core strength and body awareness ultimately serves to improve proprioception.

Such training also may involve a good degree of coordination. Faster reaction times help in a variety of sports; coordination allows one to move more precisely through space. Finally, knowing where one’s body stands in relation to the surrounding space helps prevent trips and falls.

Awareness Cultivated Through Brain-Body Connections

Prudently selected stability exercises can lay the foundation for a client’s brain, helping train it to engage everything the body could possibly need for successful movements. “Stability moves improve body awareness and prepare the relevant joints and muscles for future activity while boosting coordination and the ability to separate control of one body part versus another,” says Ryan Wooderson, physical therapist, co-founder and Director of Revo Physiotherapy & Sports Performance Denver in Denver, Colorado.

Wooderson goes on to explain how fear remains one of the largest barriers to entry into fitness for those who currently do not lead active lives. “Fear of pain or falling are high on that list. This can be reduced significantly with improved stability,” he adds.

Core Stabilization and Injury Prevention

Enhancing core stability through exercise ranks as one of the top priorities in any musculoskeletal injury prevention or rehab program. Doctors and scientists study stabilizer, mobilizer, and load transfer muscles in an effort to gain a better understanding of injury risk/prevention, particularly among athletes. Exercise programs designed to improve core stability tend to focus primarily on muscle activation, static stabilization and dynamic stability.

Core stabilization involves the simultaneous integration of active, passive and neural control systems. The terms core stability and core strength, often used interchangeably when referring to the trunk muscles, actually differ greatly. Training for core stability requires resisting motion at the lumbar spine through activation of the entire abdominal muscle. Training for core strength, conversely, allows for motions to occur through the lumbar spine while trying to isolate the abdominals. Both serve important functions in maintaining balance.

Stability exercises may be static or dynamic (functional movements that closely resemble or mimic activities of daily life or one’s preferred form of fitness). Dynamic stability, crucial in balance training, enhances overall physical function for athletes and can prevent dangerous falls/injuries that often sideline even top sports enthusiasts.

This works in a number of important ways ~

• Injury Prevention: Stability fosters a solid foundation by strengthening the muscles and connective tissues that support the joints. Personal trainers can hone in on clients’ muscular imbalances through exercises that enhance body control, rendering them able to move with greater efficiency.
• Enhanced Performance: Stability training improves functional movement patterns. Greater core stability allows for increased power in athletic movement, thus facilitating its transfer throughout the limbs. We can picture this in terms of improved speed, agility, and explosive movements.
• Improved Recovery: Activating/strengthening the stabilizer muscles promotes greater blood flow, which helps flush out metabolic waste products while delivering essential nutrients to the muscles. This in turn helps the processes of repairing and rebuilding muscle tissue, reducing post-workout soreness and hastening recovery.

Strength, Balance and Neuromuscular Stability

The human body serves as a warehouse for storing the many complex networks of interconnected systems upon which we rely for mobility. In order for the balance system to remain strong, the muscles, bones, and nervous system must synch together. Possessing strong core and quadriceps muscles help keep one’s center of gravity aligned.

Stronger muscles possess the ability to react faster to postural changes, allowing the body to adjust for the maintenance of balance. This in turn may help prevent falls. Research indicates that those individuals who regularly engage in strength training not only fall less often; if they do stumble, they stand a better chance of escaping a serious break.

For older clients, this author frequently suggests standing on the left leg while brushing teeth in the morning, and standing on the right leg for bedtime brushing. (Always stress to the client that he stands close enough to the bathroom counter in case he needs to grab onto a stable surface!). The simple yet not-always-easy task require a fine-tuned sense of balance and stability. Possessing good balance means easily controlling the body, minimizing the risk of falls and injuries. Stability ensures that the body can withstand external forces while still maintaining its position in space, such as walking, climbing stairs, or suddenly needing to pivot in an unpredictable situation.

Crafting a Successful Balance Program for Clients

From teaching weightlifting to coaching soccer teams to leading cycling classes, fitness professionals wear a number of hats throughout their professional careers. However, stretching and balance/stability training often fall by the wayside. When training clients one-on-one, balance moves can easily get incorporated at the end of an hour session, and generally require little if any specialized equipment.

Consider the following ~

• Stand on one leg while raising the other leg to the side or behind body
• Walk across the gym with right heel right in front of left toe, like walking a tightrope; reverse to return across the gym floor
• Stand up and sit down from a chair 10 times, without using hands for support
• Incorporate alternating knee lifts with each step while walking
• Experiment with a Bosu or wobble board

Once a client masters these basic moves, a trainer can graduate him to slightly more difficult challenges:

• Holding the position for a greater amount of time (see paragraph below)
• Adding movement to a pose
• Performing a 1-leg balance with eyes closed

Holding a bridge requires a body-wide effort, when executed properly. This exercise activates shoulders, back, core, glutes, and quads. However, many athletes and/or sedentary older adults possess weak spots in their bodies that somehow do not “activate” when they should. Over time, this can lead to muscle imbalance and instability.

Bridge variations in particular can help personal trainers pinpoint and then highlight a client’s weak areas. The execution and hold of a single- leg bridge, where the elevated foot hovers a few inches off the ground, demands a stable pelvic area. If the posterior leg or glute muscle fail to properly activate, the leg will drop. A side bridge with one leg elevated adds to the challenge, by calling upon oblique and lateral glute strength to also fire properly.

Enhanced Cognitive Function

Research indicates that balance training may help older adults enhance some of the key cognitive functions, such as memory, focus and reaction time. Scientists believe this may relate to the notion that balance training challenges the parts of the brain responsible for these functions.

One study conducted at the Kahrizak Charity Center in Tehran, Iran involved 13 adults aged 60-75 years. These subjects underwent testing to measure problem-solving, memory, reaction time and occupational performance. After this initial phase, the participants began balance training classes twice a week for 10 weeks. Data revealed that following balance training, all participants demonstrated improvements in problem-solving and memory.

It turns out that the inverse also proves beneficial. As reported in The Journals of Gerontology, scientists examined whether cognitive training interventions could lead to significant improvements on subjects’ balance and gait. Participants engaged in either a computer-based cognitive training intervention or a measurement-only control. Researchers focused specifically on gait speed as well as gait speed coupled with a cognitive distraction.

Outcomes revealed that cognitive training can in fact slow the degradation of balance while also improving gait while distracted. More experimentation in this area may reveal that such training could factor into a promising approach to fall/injury prevention.

Take-Home Message

As we have seen here, balance and stability, strength and coordination work as integral partners in enhancing athletic performance as well as improving one’s quality of life. To recap, some of the most significant attributes to mastering these techniques include the following ~

• Improved posture
• Better coordination/athletic ability
• Improved body awareness/proprioception
• Better reaction time and therefore fall prevention
• Reduced risk of injuries

 References:

https://www.sportsrehabexpert.com/public/167.cfm#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20aspect%20of,of%20the%20pelvis%20during%20movements

https://www.onepeloton.com/blog/stability-exercises/

https://centralperformance.com.au/blog/strength-training-your-ultimate-weapon-against-injuries-backed-by-research

https://www.racmn.com/blog/increased-strength-to-improve-balance-whats-the-connection

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3806175/

https://www.americansportandfitness.com/blogs/fitness-blog/7-ways-to-improve-your-balance-and-stability

https://athlecare.com/the-power-of-stability-training-enhancing-athletic-performance/

https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/a-z/balance-training

https://blog.bridgeathletic.com/5-stability-tricks-to-boost-your-athleticism-bridgeathletic

https://jbums.org/files/site1/user_files_a248ba/eng/mirzakhany-A-10-6032-1-2b3e981.pdf

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article-abstract/70/3/357/543165?redirectedFrom=fulltext