All right I think it’s official – the cold weather is here. This morning I had to wear my gloves while riding my bike to work.

And I know you don’t want to think about it now, but soon there will be a bunch of snow and ice on the ground.

So to help you get prepared and maybe help decrease your chance of slipping and hurting yourself in the future I decided to put together a few tips on balance training.

This will be good cause you still have a few months to integrate this into your routine and improve your balance before the streets are covered with a nice slippery layer of ice.

First and foremost balance is basically your ability to maintain your center of body mass over a base of support.

Including some balance training into your routine doesn’t take much effort; in fact all you need is a creative and open mind. For example, you could challenge yourself by standing on one foot while doing shoulder presses, bicep curls, etc.

One of the greatest exercise tools to help improve your balance is called a BOSU ball. This basically looks like a normal stability ball – but just cut in half. You might of seen this at your gym or already use it to spice up your workouts. The great thing about the BOSU ball is that you can use the dome side or the flat side to perform different exercises that will challenge your body from every angle and force you to have control over your body under an unstable platform.

BOSU Ball

What’s that you say? You don’t have a Bosu Ball?

No worries, you can get the same effect by folding an exercise mat into three sections. This will give you the same squishy feeling you get from the dome side of the Bosu ball – Simple, cheap and highly effective!

Once you get good at static movements you can take your balance to a whole new level by adding bigger movements, moving in different angles, or adding some jumping variation to the mix (think of your hop scotch days).

Here are a couple benefits that you will get by adding a little balance into your routine:

• Enhance coordination, balance, and neuromuscular function
• Develops and keeps sensory feedback systems sharp and well trained
• Increases movement efficiency
• Requires a collaborative effort by your muscles
• It will improve your posture and functional movements
• Boost movement, performance, efficiency and safety
• Help develop your balance and stabilizing strength
• Improved postural endurance
• Eliminate neuromuscular imbalances
• Improve everyday function
• Create a new sense of body awareness, body positioning, postural alignment and movement confidence
• Help you integrate responses from both your body and mind.
• Introduces something fun and playful to any fitness routine.

It’s a big list of benefits and it doesn’t take much time or effort to work some balance into your workout.

Do you work your balance already? If so I’d love to know what exercises you do. Let me know by leaving a comment below and if it’s a good one I’ll include it in my upcoming video and give you credit for it

Talk to yah later!