#90: Balance: Use it or Lose it!

Balance isn’t just something you need for yoga—it’s a key component of staying safe, functional, and independent as we age. 🧘‍♀️

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women, I dive into why maintaining your balance is crucial and how you can improve it without adding extra hours to your week.

Tune in as I share:

• Easy ways to incorporate balance exercises into your daily routine
• How small tweaks to everyday activities can help challenge and improve your balance
• Three levels of balance exercises, from beginner to advanced, that you can start doing today
• How practicing balance now can prevent falls and improve your quality of life as you age

You don’t have to spend hours in balance classes—learn how to keep your balance in check with small, easy-to-do changes in your daily life.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Want to see some of my favorite balance exercises? Check out my Instagram reels this week for inspiration >>
• Check out my lower body warm-up, which includes balance exercises >>

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:14 The Importance of Balance
• 0:34 Personal Story: My Father's Journey
• 3:02 Balance Exercises: Level One
• 5:07 Balance Exercises: Level Two
• 5:29 Balancing While Dressing
• 6:23 Making Balance Fun at the Gym
• 7:18 Incorporating Balance into Daily Routines
• 7:45 Warm-Up Balance Exercises
• 8:50 Maintaining Balance Without Extra Time
• 9:52 Proof of Balance Improvement
• 10:31 Final

Transcript

#90: Balance: Use it or Lose it!

Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are not talking about weight training, but we are talking about something else, which is a use it or lose it kind of thing.

And which is really important for us to stay safe and functional in our old age. And that is our balance. So this came up just recently, as I took my father to a physical therapist, because he has been having some trouble walking. And now we're talking about a guy who is 81, 82. 82. Anyway, he has been like an athlete, a basketball player in his youth, all my life growing up. He has been an avid runner, like almost daily runner, vacation, regardless of weather, whatever, always running. And I know he's done some weight training as well. And he has always, always also been a huge walker. He loves to travel. While he's traveled for his work. All his life and he's the guy who goes sightseeing on foot and walks and walks and walks.

And I was actually this spring in April, I was in Paris with him and my mom. And sure enough, he's still, you know, you can stick him on the pavement and he will just keep going and going and going and going like some kind of locomotive. Right. Right. But he's now been having some trouble with his walking.

And so I went with him to visit a physical therapist, since I maybe understand a little bit more about these things than my mom. And she prescribed him some balance exercises. She actually also prescribed some strengthening exercises for him. But the balance exercises is what made me think like, Hey, I need to talk about balance because that is very important.

And if we think about one of the things that is most dangerous for us as we age, Is falling and preventing falling relies on things like our balance and our strength. And so being strong alone, yeah, that'll help you catch yourself when you fall, but maybe you want to get to the point where. You're not even falling in the first place because your balance is so good.

And balance really is a use it or lose it kind of thing. Now you could test your own balance. At this age, 40 plus people have varying levels of balance. If you've been going to yoga classes, it may be that your balance is a little bit better. And if you haven't been doing anything at all, it may be a little bit worse.

So I wanted to talk about kind of three levels of things that you can be doing in order to improve your balance. 

So the first level is really for people who are having some issues with your balance, like my father. And these are easy exercises that you can incorporate in, into your day. And they really test your balance

so ideally you learn this standing in front of a mirror and maybe you need a stick or something, you know, if you have a broom handle or a mop handle or something like that to hold on to stand there with your feet, shoulder width apart. And then it's very simple while keeping your shoulders and your hips square, lift one of your feet and then keep it in the air.

It doesn't need to be high in the air, but just hold it in the air. And work on being able to hold it for longer and longer periods of time. And if you're in front of the mirror, it may help to look yourself in the eyes to keep your balance or to look at a spot on the wall above the mirror or whatever that is stationary that can help you to keep your balance.

And then you put that foot down and pick up the other foot and do the same thing. And ideally, you want to use that stick as little as possible and eventually get to the point where you're not using a stick at all. Okay. So that's level one. And Hopefully every single one of you by the end of the year are going to pass level one with flying colors, right?

If you start today, you should be able to stand on one of your feet for at least 30 seconds, if not a minute, and then switch over and stand on the other foot for 30 seconds to a minute. 

All right. Level two is using your balance in everyday life. And this is, I think something That I would encourage you to strive for because by incorporating, or let's say by doing your everyday things in a slightly different way, you actually practice your balance without even realizing it.

And when I'm talking about these things in everyday life, I mean, putting on your clothes. So some people may sit down on the edge of the bed to Put their feet through the holes in their underwear, you know, to put on their underwear. Try doing that standing up instead. And what about putting on your socks?

Don't sit down to do that anymore, or even your shoes, right? I personally don't have a chair in my front hall because it's so tiny in my front hall. So we are forced to put on our shoes standing up and even to tie our shoelaces and all that standing up. All of that is practicing our balance at the very same time.

So that is an easy way to like up your game on your balance. And yeah. You can do this in various different ways. I actually have fun. Every time I go to the weight room or go to the gym, I should say, because sometimes I'm going there for classes, but when I go to the gym and I'm in the locker room, of course, I'm changing from my outdoor shoes to my indoor shoes.

And I do that standing up and I might do. A little game with myself that, yeah, I take off one shoe and one sock without ever putting my foot down, then I've got to, like, reach over for my bag, find the new pair of socks, you know, unhook the socks from each other, put that new sock on and put the other, you know, my outdoor or my indoor shoe, whatever it is, the other shoe on.

And then I, you know, get, put that foot down and do the same thing on the other side. So I make like a little game of it because I got to change my shoes and socks anyway. So why not, you know, get some benefit out of it at the same time. And you can do things like in the shower, washing your feet, standing up and, and all kinds of things like that.

And now a next level would be to add some balance exercises into your life. Now, one way of doing that is to take a class where there are some balance exercises. So a lot of yoga classes do that, and maybe some other classes that your gym has to offer, or you can incorporate it, for example, into your weight training. warm up. I do that when I'm on lower body day. So my way of, for example, warming up my hip sockets is that I pick up my, my leg, my foot and rotate it. Around to the back. Oh my God. That's really hard to describe on a podcast, but if you can imagine like rolling your shoulder from front to back, I'm doing the same thing, but with my leg and I'll do four circles front to back and then four circles back to front.

And that whole time I'm standing on the other leg with the rolling leg. off the ground. And so that is a balance exercise right there. And then I'll do the other side. And actually I'll put a link in the show notes. So if you want to take a look at my lower body warmup mobility exercises, you can, you can check that out because it does have some balance components to it, which specifically that one that I just described.

But I guess my key message here today is that you don't need to like schedule additional time out of your week to be practicing your balance. You can very effectively hold onto your balance by doing those small things that I suggested in the beginning, you can do this standing on one foot and then on the other foot while you're brushing your teeth.

While you're waiting for your coffee to drip or your water to boil, and obviously the getting dressed thing. That's easy enough to incorporate into your life. It's going to feel hard in the beginning. I'm not going to kid you in the beginning, you're going to be like, Oh yeah, I need to be standing and, Oh, I might need to hold onto the wall or whatever, you might be falling over.

So, you know, proceed with caution. You'll notice after just a few days or weeks, it will become easier and easier and it'll just become a habit and your balance will be maintained that way. For me, the proof is in that when I go to one of these classes like body balance that I like to do, they do a balance exercise, which is like a yoga balance exercise.

And they're quite complicated where you're. You know, a little bit shifted sideways in a star position, or you're moving your arms at the same time . And I'm actually able to do that almost as well as I was back when I was doing yoga twice a week. So you don't always need to have like a formal kind of exercise for something in order to maintain your balance.

And this week, if you check me out on Instagram or Facebook, you'll see me doing some, some of these balance exercises because I'll be posting them in reels just for some inspiration. And with that, I will leave you till next week and wish you happy training.