30 day balance challenge
Balance is out ability to stay upright whether that’s sitting or standing. We collect sensory feedback from our skin, soft tissue and joints about where parts of our body are in the space around us, this feeds back to the brain where information collected from our senses combines to tell our body where we are. Our brain sorts through this information and then decides what it needs to do to correct a part to keep us upright. All this information collecting; processing and motor feedback happens in a split second and its this that keeps us from falling as we move around in our daily activities. When this process is hindered ; it may be by cognitive decline, weak muscles, loss of range of movement in a joint, soft tissue damage or atrophy, we become less able to correct our self and our balance becomes compromised. So you see balance is a complex process but like anything else it can be improved.
Our 30 day balance challenge will start out by simply assessing our balance. The easiest way to do this is to stand on one leg. May sound simple but it may be harder than you expect. From there you can make it harder by removing some of the sensory mechanisms or changing the surface. As we go through the 30 days I’ll be demonstrating some simple exercises that you can do at home that can help improve your balance. They’ll progressively get more challenging with a real functional element to really challenge your balance. Try to do some of the exercises bare foot to encourage sensory feedback from your feet but please remember to be safe and not end up having a fall!
