Video and Transcript: Beginner Exercises to Improve Your Balance

Open video in YouTube

Transcript:

Hi everyone, Doctor Orit Hickman here, physical therapist, and I am just going to show you a series of about three to five really simple exercises that you can start to do for balance. If you have a balance issue, I would strongly recommend that you meet with a physical therapist, have them evaluate it and be able to really take you through some good exercises that are totally meant specifically for you. But, if you want to give some of these a try some of these are ones that I give to my patients on a regular basis and they're really basic. They’re a wonderful place to start.

So the very first thing you want to do is, if your balance is good enough, I would like for you to do these without shoes on. And if you feel like you need to, you can do them with your shoes on, if it feels like it feels like it’s much more stable for you to start. But we do spend a lot of time without shoes when we’re walking at home or we're going you know in and out of the bathroom, the bathtub, the showers. Most people I know do not shower with their shoes on. So it's really important for you to feel balanced when you're barefoot, just as important as it is to feel balanced when you have shoes on.

So the very first exercise that I'm going to have you do is, I'm going to have you stand with your feet as close together as you possibly can. Now this foam roller is here for me in case I need something just to have a reminder as to where I might be in space. At home I would recommend that you use something a little bit more stable than this. Maybe stand with a chair or stand near a sofa, something that you feel like it will give you a really good reminder if you feel really unstable. But standing with your feet close together is a great place to start and you want to try and be in this position for about 30 seconds to a minute. Then if you want to make that a little bit more challenging, what you can do is you can close your eyes and as soon as you take your visual system out of the picture you're going to immediately feel yourself start to sway and that is completely normal. Don't be panicked. Again, that's why it's really good to stand near something that you can hold onto to remind you where you are in space. And then you do that for, also if you can practice for, 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

The next exercise I'll have you try is what we call tandem stance and with tandem stance what you're doing is you're putting your heel in front of your toes so that your feet are in lined up this way. And you want the heel of the front foot touching the toes of the back and then try to balance there. Now a lot of times what you'll find is that one foot feels more stable than the other foot and so you should practice with your left foot in front and you should also practice with your right foot in front because one of those is going to feel more wobbly than the others, And then you want to try and do the same thing hold for about 30 seconds to a minute. And then to make that more challenging you do the same thing that you did with the first exercise which is close your eyes. And you can see that I am a lot more unstable as soon as I take my visual system whoo out of the picture. So it's really important that you do that near something so that you can hold onto it if you need to.

The final exercise that I think is a really good one for starting to again work on balance at home is standing on one leg. And, this is one that for a lot of us can be really, really wobbly, right? That's why we say yoga can be really good because you do a lot of practicing standing with your feet in really awkward positions. So same thing you try to balance and one foot may feel more stable than the other so you want to practice with both feet and then when you get good at that let’s give it a try closing your eyes. You can see that I am not willing, I am not willing, to not hold on to something. There's nobody here to catch me if I fall over.

So these are great those are six really, really simple exercises to start to use to practice your balance at home. So give those a try. Let me know how it goes. If you find that your balance is not great these are great exercises to try and I'll give you more exercises on balance as we go along but those are great beginning ones. Sso give them a shot. Have a great day!