For a complete personal exercise program, you should include exercises for balance and flexibility …
Building strength.
Increasing power.
Developing your endurance.
Improving stamina.
Losing/managing weight.
Physical toning.
Those are some of the more common things that first come to mind when considering what makes up a complete personal exercise program.
Rarely is balance or flexibility a part of that mix.
But both should be.
The truth is, you really don’t have a complete personal exercise program without including exercises for these vital elements of your physical fitness.
And yes, they really are vital.
Don’t think so?
Try living life with poor balance and flexibility for just a brief period of time and you’ll quickly be convinced of their value to your physical well-being.
BALANCE
When the topic of balance training does come up, it’s usually a message that you need to add balance training to your personal exercise program as you age.
Okay, that’s true.
Loss of balance can increase as we age if we don’t care for our bodies in a way that maintains good balance throughout our life.
But the fact is that good balance is something most of us take for granted, especially considering the fact that balance is something we need and rely on to do many of the most basic things in life (at every age) such as walking, getting up from sitting on a couch, to putting on a pair of pants.
Think about this: When you put on a pair of pants, do you have the balance to remain standing while you do so? Or do you have to hold on to something, or lean against something while sliding a leg through a pant leg? Or do you have to sit down to partly put on a pair of pants?
Yes, balance determines something as ordinary as how you put on your pants!
So, the central value of balance training is that balance exercises improve your ability to control and stabilize your body’s position.
FLEXIBILITY
People are less likely to openly say much about their balance, but it’s not uncommon to hear people say things like, “I’m not very flexible” or “I’m not as flexible as I used to be.”
The reason flexibility is so important is because flexibility is the ability to move a joint through a full range of motion. The less flexible you are, the more impaired your range of motion is, which directly impacts how you live and the physical actions and activities you engage in. So the benefits of flexibility training include enabling greater freedom of movement, improves posture, increases physical and mental relaxation, releases muscle tension and soreness, often can help reduce pain, and reduces the risk of injury and balance problems.
SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT ADDING TRAINING TO YOUR PERSONAL EXERCISE PROGRAM …
Having good balance and flexibility is vital for physical fitness. Some good news is that both balance training and flexibility training are the easiest exercises in your personal exercise regimen, and they can be done just about anywhere and generally don’t require any equipment (or specific equipment, although a couple pieces of equipment like a bosu ball and stability ball would be beneficial and inexpensive investments).
There are numerous exercises for balance training, I’ll share a dozen below (all of which you can search on YouTube or Google for video examples of how to do the exercise with proper form and technique):
There are also numerous exercises/stretches for flexibility training. I’ll share a dozen below, and video examples of these can also be found by searching YouTube or Google:
For your best physical fitness, do whatever homework you need to do to make sure you incorporate balance and flexibility training into your personal exercise program. Both your body and mind will thank you for it!
Scotty
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