Balance Exercises

[Widdershins]

Balance is an essential skill in disc golf. Many shanked shots are the result of being off balance. If you watch someone's form while they are throwing you can often predict a poor shot before it is released due to imbalance. Yet balance is seldom focused on and seldom trained for.

When I started cross training with personal trainers a few years ago, I noticed how often I was given exercises which worked on balance and how damn poor my balance was. When previously I worked out on my own I never concentrated on balance. Strength, endurance and flexibility, sure. But not balance. Maybe because it is embarrassing to be in the gym and show the world what a klutz you are. Or maybe because I never noticed other people doing balance exercises except dancers or maybe it just did not occur to me. Who knows but now I do lots of balance exercises and I think my balance is better because of it.

One of the skills of life which diminish with age is balance. For those of us with poor balance to begin with this will cause problems in disc golf and in life. Something my trainer mentioned to me is that many people avoid balance activities as they age. Youngsters stand up when putting on pants. Old folks sit down when putting on pants. Simple tasks like these can aid balance. Once I heard this I made a point to dress standing up. Putting on shoes is trickier than it sounds.

When I have a work out session it is expected that before I start the session I do a full stretching routine and warm up to a full sweat. I have added a balance exercise which includes a stretching component I call "Tea Kettles".

I'm a little tea pot short and stout, here is my handle here is my spout... You may recall this nursery school song which is where the name of this exercise came from. Unfortunately in my case that "short and stout" line hits too close to home.

Find a straight line in the gym floor which you walk up and back (like walking a tight rope). Take a big step forward with one leg, bend forward at the waist and touch a finger of the opposite hand to your forward toe and kick out your back leg (tipping the tea kettle forward). Stand back up and step forward with the other leg and repeat the process with each step while keeping balance. This is not a speed exercise. It should be done slowly and gracefully (in theory, haha).

On the walk back, you can make the process more challenging by touching the forward toe with first one hand then the next during each step.

For people with superb balance this exercise will appear easy. To make it harder, put a kettle bell (or barbell) in the hand which touches the toe and the weight of the kettle bell makes it much harder to keep balance.

Ok, I know everyone who reads this will run right out and try it. Then drop and give me 20. Hahaha. Sit up straight. Eat your vegetables. No more impure thoughts for you.

 

[Mr. Wick]

Find a straight line in the gym floor which you walk up and back (like walking a tight rope). Take a big step forward with one leg, bend forward at the waist and touch a finger of the opposite hand to your forward toe and kick out your back leg (tipping the tea kettle forward). Stand back up and step forward with the other leg and repeat the process with each step while keeping balance. This is not a speed exercise. It should be done slowly and gracefully (in theory, haha).

On the walk back, you can make the process more challenging by touching the forward toe with first one hand then the next during each step.

For people with superb balance this exercise will appear easy. To make it harder, put a kettle bell (or barbell) in the hand which touches the toe and the weight of the kettle bell makes it much harder to keep balance.

This is really a great exercise. If it gets too easy this way, try to jump as far as you can forward and land on one foot, touch toe with opposite hand, stand up, stay on one foot and jump to the next foot, all while staying on the line. This was one of the exercises I used when rehabing a knee injury. It's great for all of those balance and support muscles.

 

[Mike C]

That's a neat exercise, I just tried it out.

10 years of skateboarding turned clumsy old me into a little bit more graceful of a guy. Took a few hard falls in the process though

 

[Jeronimo]

Honestly Mark, I would recommend a regular routine of Yoga. Everything you're talking about you'll get in one 30 + min workout. With all the torque we put in our backs during the throwing motion, Yoga is masterful at warming up/cooling down the spine & muscles. Balance, stretching, muscle working, breathing... it's unrivaled. Men, dump the machismo and pick up a Yoga mat some time.

 

[setthegearshift]

Yoga is awesome, helps me in disc, ultra running, and just all around daily living

 

[whiz]

Hm...

 

[ChrisWoj]

That's a neat exercise, I just tried it out.

10 years of skateboarding turned clumsy old me into a little bit more graceful of a guy. Took a few hard falls in the process though

Something I like to do - since you mentioned skateboarding - is fill a 2-liter bottle with water, screw the cap on nice n tight - and then take a skateboard (minus trucks and wheels) and use it as a balance board over the bottle. I do it while standing around watching television, simple and works balance. Also helps to strengthen the tendons and muscles around your ankles.

 

[Two Scoops]

In discussing this topic with coaches and athletes whose opinion I trust, along with my own experience, balance is notoriously "untrainable." You pretty much have the level or skill of balance at whatever threshold you have, it will deteriorate with age, and that's pretty much it.

By untrainable, I mean that it is not a capacity or skill that can be improved generally. However, it is trainable as a specific skill. For example, I would not expect someone who diligently performed and became expert at this tea pot drill to have any carryover in improved balance in other movements, but I would expect to see improved balance in tea pot drill itself, and movements similar to it.

One exception to this would be that to the extent that these sort of drills train and strengthen the various small muscles one might use in maintaining balance can provide improvement in balance generally. Of course that is due to the strengthening itself as a skill and not an improvement to the "sense" of balance itself. I believe this effect is why people, IMO, mistakenly believe that balance drills improve the sense of balance, i.e., they begin doing balance drill and see an improvement in balance and attribute the improvement to the drill, when in reality it was just a strengthen of the muscles. While this effect is real, it has a fairly low ceiling in improving balance, that is, it's not like you can attain super-balance by getting really strong small stabilizing muscles. This is similar to planks--a great, great exercise for strengthening and stabilizing the core, but once proficiency is attained, you cannot see continued benefits by maintaining the plank positions for longer and longer periods (law of diminishing returns).

So my take on balance training is to do some form it on a regular basis until proficiency is achieved in the drill. Then maintain by occasional practice. If there is a specific movement you would like to practice (not improve) balance in, try to make the drill similar to the movement you wish to improve. Use other drills to the extent that you find that they strengthen or maintain strength in the small muscles that contribute to balance in the movement.

my $.02

 

[ChrisWoj]

In discussing this topic with coaches and athletes whose opinion I trust, along with my own experience, balance is notoriously "untrainable." You pretty much have the level or skill of balance at whatever threshold you have, it will deteriorate with age, and that's pretty much it.

By untrainable, I mean that it is not a capacity or skill that can be improved generally. However, it is trainable as a specific skill. For example, I would not expect someone who diligently performed and became expert at this tea pot drill to have any carryover in improved balance in other movements, but I would expect to see improved balance in tea pot drill itself, and movements similar to it.

One exception to this would be that to the extent that these sort of drills train and strengthen the various small muscles one might use in maintaining balance can provide improvement in balance generally. Of course that is due to the strengthening itself as a skill and not an improvement to the "sense" of balance itself. I believe this effect is why people, IMO, mistakenly believe that balance drills improve the sense of balance, i.e., they begin doing balance drill and see an improvement in balance and attribute the improvement to the drill, when in reality it was just a strengthen of the muscles. While this effect is real, it has a fairly low ceiling in improving balance, that is, it's not like you can attain super-balance by getting really strong small stabilizing muscles. This is similar to planks--a great, great exercise for strengthening and stabilizing the core, but once proficiency is attained, you cannot see continued benefits by maintaining the plank positions for longer and longer periods (law of diminishing returns).

So my take on balance training is to do some form it on a regular basis until proficiency is achieved in the drill. Then maintain by occasional practice. If there is a specific movement you would like to practice (not improve) balance in, try to make the drill similar to the movement you wish to improve. Use other drills to the extent that you find that they strengthen or maintain strength in the small muscles that contribute to balance in the movement.

my $.02

Like anything else in life there are limits to what someone can do with regards to balance. But one can improve ones ability to balance through the exercises you mentioned. Anything that improves muscle and tendon strength through the body's supporting elements is likely to make balancing and achieving what one is sensing much easier.

 

[Widdershins]

In discussing this topic with coaches and athletes whose opinion I trust, along with my own experience, balance is notoriously "untrainable." You pretty much have the level or skill of balance at whatever threshold you have, it will deteriorate with age, and that's pretty much it.

By untrainable, I mean that it is not a capacity or skill that can be improved generally. However, it is trainable as a specific skill. For example, I would not expect someone who diligently performed and became expert at this tea pot drill to have any carryover in improved balance in other movements, but I would expect to see improved balance in tea pot drill itself, and movements similar to it.

One exception to this would be that to the extent that these sort of drills train and strengthen the various small muscles one might use in maintaining balance can provide improvement in balance generally. Of course that is due to the strengthening itself as a skill and not an improvement to the "sense" of balance itself. I believe this effect is why people, IMO, mistakenly believe that balance drills improve the sense of balance, i.e., they begin doing balance drill and see an improvement in balance and attribute the improvement to the drill, when in reality it was just a strengthen of the muscles. While this effect is real, it has a fairly low ceiling in improving balance, that is, it's not like you can attain super-balance by getting really strong small stabilizing muscles. This is similar to planks--a great, great exercise for strengthening and stabilizing the core, but once proficiency is attained, you cannot see continued benefits by maintaining the plank positions for longer and longer periods (law of diminishing returns).

So my take on balance training is to do some form it on a regular basis until proficiency is achieved in the drill. Then maintain by occasional practice. If there is a specific movement you would like to practice (not improve) balance in, try to make the drill similar to the movement you wish to improve. Use other drills to the extent that you find that they strengthen or maintain strength in the small muscles that contribute to balance in the movement.

my $.02

So klutziness is permanent? Damn. I thought only my putter was untrainable. Oh, and my cats...and wife and kid, of course.

So should I just give up and withdraw my application to join the Flying Wallendas? Do I have to sell my ballet shoes? Could you suggest an athletic endeavor which requires no athletic skills?

 

[ChrisWoj]

So klutziness is permanent? Damn. I thought only my putter was untrainable. Oh, and my cats...and wife and kid, of course.

So should I just give up and withdraw my application to join the Flying Wallendas? Do I have to sell my ballet shoes? Could you suggest an athletic endeavor which requires no athletic skills?

Well, judging by ESPN coverage, you could always take up high stakes poker.

 

[New013]

yup, nothing is better than Yoga for centering your body

 

[JR]

There is a long way to go in perfecting body control and speeding up response time of brain to muscle reaction in correcting swaying from perfect posture. That lies outside the domain of strength and some strength is required to reap any benefits. 100 % control but knocked down by wind can't be resisted with 0 % muscle power. 100 % muscle power without control has you swaying and falling down fast without the wind. In practice many people would benefit from balance training. And not only in the increasing muscle power benefit too. Perfect posture with perfect form with perfect speed and acceleration driven by perfect muscle power with fastest possible nervous system firing is the only way to gain the absolute maximum distance without wind assistance and throwing down in a steeper angle from a taller height.

 

[JoshEpoo]

balance is notoriously "untrainable." You pretty much have the level or skill of balance at whatever threshold you have, it will deteriorate with age, and that's pretty much it.

One exception to this would be that to the extent that these sort of drills train and strengthen the various small muscles one might use in maintaining balance can provide improvement in balance generally. Of course that is due to the strengthening itself as a skill and not an improvement to the "sense" of balance itself.

I just pulled a few excerpts because much of what you're saying is in a general way correct [i.e. we are all limited by our physiology in some ways], but it's mostly irrelevant when considering a training routine unless you're already in very good shape or extremely young. Overlooking the benefits conferred by strengthening your muscles through balance exercises would be ridiculous. Your physical fitness, if left unchecked, will go into decline much faster than your brain power diminishes with age. Doing regular balance and flexibility exercises will maintain strength through a full range of motion and carries with it invaluable real world benefits.

Further, I don't think it's accurate to say you can't improve, or recapture or delay the loss of some of, your balance. Vision plays a big part in a person ability to balance. If you do a balance routine with your eyes closed or blind folded you're forcing other parts of your brain and body to work on balance and can discover and train parts of your brain you didn't even know were working. You'll often hear disc golfers say they don't really consciously know where their eyes are pointing during their throw because their brain is elsewhere. You can train that part of your brain to have better body awareness and control over your center of gravity.

 

[pdiddy71]

I don't know if you can actually improve balance from doing balance specific exercises. I do think that you can improve and strengthen the muscles that hold the body in a balanced state. For example there some courses around here that require good balance skills due to the terrain. The course in Christiansburg, VA called Golden Hills is a mountainous course with a lot of steep and slick fairways. Sometimes when I have had a bad shot there, it is possible to end up on a rough hill side. Luckily I have good balance naturally. By having those muscles developed to help hold the body in the same position for a small period of time, you can "hold" that stance longer and in turn have better balance.

 

[Widdershins]

So I asked my trainer if it is possible to improve balance. He said, of course. You can improve any skill you possess.

Babies develop balance. It is hard to believe that at some point your balance becomes static. We know balance can become worse. Why could it not also become better?

Some people have superb balance. How did they get it if not by training and practice?

 

[JoshEpoo]

So I asked my trainer if it is possible to improve balance. He said, of course. You can improve any skill you possess.

Babies develop balance. It is hard to believe that at some point your balance becomes static. We know balance can become worse. Why could it not also become better?

Some people have superb balance. How did they get it if not by training and practice?

TwoScoops has shared a particularly cynical view of this subject. Perhaps he's got experience trying to teach unteachables or has been around a lot of nitwits or something. It's a relatively straightforward matter to train your muscles to support your body. Everyone can do it, and the impact that it can have is enormous.

Inner ear function and the neurological component to balance are the things that are less tangible and harder to train. If you've ever experienced a head rush, or vertigo, or any sense of dizziness, you know there is something going on in your head that controls how you're perceiving the world over which you have no power. You can't control how your inner ear function works, and you probably can't truly improve it or prevent it's decay over time, but you can train yourself to listen and respond to it under normal circumstances. Again, try doing a balance routine blind folded and I bet you will fall over pretty quick. If you keep working at it, you'll get better.

Just because there are certain parts of your physiology that are hardwired doesn't mean you can't train the parts that aren't to improve your real world performance.

 

[Two Scoops]

Well, this is just my opinion. I'm okay if no one agrees with me, but in an attempt to clarify my point:

When I say "trainable" I'm talking about being able to increase a capacity, or raising a threshold. Strength and endurance, for example, are highly trainable. Take a weak person and put him on a good strength training program and they will gradually increase their strength threshold, i.e., he will get stronger in the specific training movements and this will transfer over into every day activities. (I also argue that strength is a skill in itself that must be practiced, but that's a whole other conversation.) Likewise, take a couch potato and have him run hill sprints a few times a week and cardiovascular endurance will improve, there will be carryover into other real world activities, and his endurance threshold will rise, not indefinitely of course, but it will rise substantially in any untrained person.

Balance is more like handedness. If you're ambidextrous, you're gifted. Most of us are right or lefty, and that's pretty much it. You can't train your way into being lefty if your righty. You can practice a whole set of movements and skills, and improve your dexterity with your off hand, but you're not going to raise the threshold of your handedness.

My central point in the last post was that I don't see the value in spending a lot of time or energy on training balance since the benefits are realized very quickly. Train balance to the point you demonstrate competency in the movements you're interested in and then do occasional maintenance to preserve the competency. Spend the other time training things that can actually improve, or are more susceptible to erosion, like strength, endurance and flexibility.

A final point, athletes with superb balance do spend a lot of time "training" balance, but it is more accurately described as practicing balance. They are completive in sports that require balance because they had good balance to start with, and they are honing that balance in practice. They did not develop that balance with drills, etc. I'm reminded of how many people, coaches even, will make the argument about the value of sprinting on body composition by saying, "Look at an elite sprinter's body, then look at an elite marathoner's body, which body do you want... the sprinter's?... then sprint!" I say "bull pucky." Elite sprinters are elite sprinters because they have a lot of fast twitch muscle which is good for sprinting, and which is why they look the way they do. Their bodies chose their sport, their sport did not choose their body.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Well, this is just my opinion. I'm okay if no one agrees with me, but in an attempt to clarify my point:

When I say "trainable" I'm talking about being able to increase a capacity, or raising a threshold. Strength and endurance, for example, are highly trainable. Take a weak person and put him on a good strength training program and they will gradually increase their strength threshold, i.e., he will get stronger in the specific training movements and this will transfer over into every day activities. (I also argue that strength is a skill in itself that must be practiced, but that's a whole other conversation.) Likewise, take a couch potato and have him run hill sprints a few times a week and cardiovascular endurance will improve, there will be carryover into other real world activities, and his endurance threshold will rise, not indefinitely of course, but it will rise substantially in any untrained person.

Balance is more like handedness. If you're ambidextrous, you're gifted. Most of us are right or lefty, and that's pretty much it. You can't train your way into being lefty if your righty. You can practice a whole set of movements and skills, and improve your dexterity with your off hand, but you're not going to raise the threshold of your handedness.

My central point in the last post was that I don't see the value in spending a lot of time or energy on training balance since the benefits are realized very quickly. Train balance to the point you demonstrate competency in the movements you're interested in and then do occasional maintenance to preserve the competency. Spend the other time training things that can actually improve, or are more susceptible to erosion, like strength, endurance and flexibility.

A final point, athletes with superb balance do spend a lot of time "training" balance, but it is more accurately described as practicing balance. They are completive in sports that require balance because they had good balance to start with, and they are honing that balance in practice. They did not develop that balance with drills, etc. I'm reminded of how many people, coaches even, will make the argument about the value of sprinting on body composition by saying, "Look at an elite sprinter's body, then look at an elite marathoner's body, which body do you want... the sprinter's?... then sprint!" I say "bull pucky." Elite sprinters are elite sprinters because they have a lot of fast twitch muscle which is good for sprinting, and which is why they look the way they do. Their bodies chose their sport, their sport did not choose their body.

Your point regarding "handedness" is pretty much false. It takes dedication and years of proper training but becoming as strong with one hand as the other is definitely possible. Few elite basketball players, for example, go into their teen years ambidextrous. It is at that age that coaches will begin harping on the idea of using their weak hand for everything. Eating, brushing their teeth, etc. - All of the little things. You can train yourself to become dexterous with your off hand. It simply gets harder as you get older, like any other athletic endeavor and many intellectual ones.

Frankly - the same goes for balance. Especially the balance needed to be a properly coordinated athlete. With regards to your upper limits (for example: being able to scale a cable-car wire to the top of a mountain) there are obviously some people that are going to be more naturally gifted than others. But teaching proper balance with regards to disc golf competition? It is something that can be learned and improved upon fairly constantly over time. Mark has commented on my balance in the past, years ago, and I can honestly tell you I went through high school as a clutz. The balance I have on my feet, the ability to stay within myself and throw coordinated disc golf shots comes entirely from training and practice.

You start with strength, and from strength comes coordination and balance. Most people don't understand that you need to start by building strength in order to build balance. They do silly little balance exercises that don't really help anything on their own - but if they took the time to work on a set of simple body-weight calisthenics they'd find that they are capable of far more than they believed.


As for the sprinter's body vs the distance runner's body... When I was a frosh in college I was 5'10 and 135 - and very much looked the part of the distance runner that I was running the 10,000M in track. I'm 5'10 and 165, and it isn't fat I've put on. Nor is it bulky muscle. It is all lean muscle. I look more like one of those compact sprinters than I do a distance runner these days, even if I can still pump out miles. But right now I'd find it far easier achieving the varsity 100M standard from my HS days than the varsity 1600M standard, that's for damn sure.

 

[talkinsmack]

do yoga. anyone that thinks it is beneath them should try 5 minutes of advanced yoga to get a perspective of what you lack. inner ear seems like something that you can't control but I disagree. if your trying to prevent infections, aging and brain damage, there are definitely ways to address those problems. aside from yoga, there is also pilates. I don't do pilates because there is a lot of equipment involved which translates to $$$. you either pay to visit a pilates studio or you buy all the equipment and a bigger house. the term "pilates class" is rather dumb since you can learn everything and accomplish nothing when your $ runs out.