Can't Balance? Try this.

Can’t Balance? Try this.
Many single-leg balance exercises focus on the leg which is contact with the ground. This can be helpful, but quite often, the limiting factor is actually the leg off the ground. Let’s find out exactly how you can assess whether this is affecting your balance, and if so, what you can do about it.
Whenever we lift up one leg, that same side hip should not drop toward the ground. However, in many cases where I assess balance, the hip does drop too low without the client ever realizing it. This causes a loss of balance and typically results in a fall inward (toward the hip which drops). This makes a lot of sense.
Try this for yourself. Stand up. Lift up one leg in the air. On the side with the leg in the air, purposely lower the hip as close as you can to the ground. Did you notice that you will tend to lose your balance? This is because we are changing what we call our center of gravity toward the hip which is dropping. Quite often, this happens all within a matter of seconds without the client knowing why they lost their balance.
It’s difficult to know exactly what all of the parts of our body are doing at any given time. Consequently, whenever we lift up one leg, we’re not going to really be able to sense what our hip is doing. Unfortunately, since many of us get in minimal or no side-to-side movement, the side hip musculature (or the gluteus medius) in our case could be weak resulting in a dropped hip.
This will cause us to fall inwardly. To offset this, instead of dropping our hip, we should raise up the hip. You should also tuck up the front of the pelvis toward the head. (This typically gets us into a neutral pelvic position).
What many people will observe is that it will be easier to balance. However, if you raise it up too high, this can cause us to fall outward (versus inward when the hip drops too low). The key is: find your sweet spot. Ideally, there is going to be a “sweet spot” where it’s easiest to balance. This is where it’s good to stay at for 30-60 seconds at first.
Now, just because you found your sweet spot for this exercise doesn’t mean it will be the answer to all your problems. It’s possible there may be issues with the leg which is in contact with the ground. Therefore, if you are still struggling quite a bit even after you found your sweet spot means still need to investigate the leg which is contact with the ground. However, many of you have already exhausted the investigations of the leg on the ground and need to focus on the opposite hip.
Let’s assume you found your sweet spot and can manage at least 30 seconds without looking like your blowing a .3 on a DWI test. Congratulations, you passed the first progression of this exercise. But we still need to progress. Life is dynamic and we need to make our exercise dynamic too. To do that, we are going to begin oscillations of going up and down about a half an inch above and below our sweet spot. If we go up and down slowly for 30-60 seconds and can still balance, then we are promoting dynamic balance.
Once we can accomplish this for 3 sets for 30-60 seconds, we’re ready for the hip in the air to go side-to-side. In this scenario we simply rotate the hip in the air back, then forward. Make the movements small at first so you can still balance. Once this becomes easy, you can progress to pretty large motions. Again, we are going for 3 sets for 30-60 seconds.
Lastly, we are going to progress into a figure-eight. For this motion, we will move the moving hip in a figure eight movement (or a sideways number eight). Make sure to reverse directions of the figure-eight after about 30 seconds. The goal is to do a total of 60 seconds for 3 sets.
Don’t forget about the other hip! You may notice that either the left side or right side is better. That’s okay. However, the eventual goal is to get both sides able to perform figure-eights for 60 seconds for 3 sets. This exercise can be used as a warm up exercise or as an exercise to do between strength training sets.
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Chapters
0:00: Introduction
0:04: This happens without you knowing
0:43: You still may need to work on this
1:13: Set up for balance exercise
1:46: First progression or stationary balance exercise
2:00: Second progression or up/down progression of balance exercise
2:37: Ruling out other factors
3:02: Review of first and second progressions
3:17: Third progression or side-to-side balance exercise
3:26: Fourth progression or Figure-8’s of balance exercise
4:04: Using the balance exercise with strength training
4:27: Do you have issues with your hips?
4:47 Outro

[@SIMPlyNikko]

dude yes!! love the captions, what a great way to keep your audience engaged even if the volume is off. and putting in captions is such a laborious thing to do!

[@VonGilletteFitness]

Thanks Nikko! Appreciate it.