Sunday, January 16, 2011

Balance exercises

Balance is something that I find absolutely fascinating.    It is a really complex sense with a number of different elements:

  • vestibular (equilibrium)
  • proprioception (body position awareness), and 
  • vision. 

These elements work together: sometimes all 3 contributing equally, sometimes we rely more on one system or two, to keep us stable.   A couple of years back I read a fascinating book on the topic: Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense:  highly recommended.


Anyway, SueC has had a couple of good posts recently which are worth reading on the subject of balance:

Martial arts - a balancing act -  I needed to understand a little more about what balance actually is and how the body controls it

and

Balance exercises - Intrinsic balance can be improved by doing exercises that focus on improving the senses important in detecting a loss of balance - Sue describes some good exercises to play with


Great stuff

2 comments:

JetAviator7 said...

I have chronic back pain and have been using a teeter hang ups ep-950 inversion table to stretch my back muscles and relieve the pain.

With about 5 minutes workout twice a day my back is pain free.

Sue C said...

Thanks for the link Chris, I wondered where all that traffic came from!