Maintaining balance is integral to High Performance Aging.

Being able to balance is a very useful skill for maintaining good health and an active lifestyle. You can learn how to stabilize and strengthen your body structure and improve your proprioception fairly easily. As these attributes improve your movement habits and range of control will improve as well.

Human balance is a complex mix of visual cues, proprioceptive sensing acuity mixed with muscular responsive capability. Accidental falling can cause serious injury and as you age the likelihood of falling increases, injuries from falls are very common in the elderly. The likelihood of accidental falls can be minimized by practicing falls prevention balance drills.

Training your balance focuses on stabilizing your structure and understanding and feeling your foot to core connection. Strength conditioning of the fascial lines including the toes, the foot arch, the calves and thighs are very helpful in maintaining the ability to balance. Learning how to strengthen and condition these muscles is a pretty simple progression that can learned very quickly. When you are learning how to control your range of movement you will become more and more aware of how your dynamic center of mass, located in your torso, affects your core to feet connection.

Once you have mastered the basic training drills you can practice and play on your own, applying the principles to your lifestyle. Your balance will improve further and become part of a whole body awareness you carry with you through out your day.

Training drills to balance on two legs and one leg as well as balancing while moving your center of gravity are integral to yoga vinyasa and Qi Gong/Tai Chi/I liq Chuan. These exercises are functional and immediately applicable and supportive of an active lifestyle and will help to minimize any falling accidents. These exercises are safe and accessible to everyone and can be modified to any skill level from beginner to experienced.