Balance isn’t just for tightrope walkers or yogis. It’s a crucial component of overall fitness that enhances your ability to perform everyday tasks, from walking and climbing stairs to playing sports and lifting weights. Good balance can help prevent injuries, improve coordination, and boost physical performance. It’s an often-overlooked aspect of fitness that deserves more attention in your training regimen. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best balance exercises that reveal whether or not you’re in good shape.
Balance naturally declines as you age, increasing the risk of falls and injuries. Incorporating balance exercises into your routine can counteract this decline, enhancing your stability and overall quality of life. Whether you’re an athlete aiming to elevate your performance or want to move more confidently and securely through daily activities, working on your balance offers substantial benefits.
Ready to test your performance? These 10 balance exercises can help you assess and improve your stability, ensuring you’re in good, if not even great, shape. Each exercise challenges your balance differently, delivering a well-rounded approach to this essential fitness component.
If you can master these balance exercises, you’ll be well on your way to achieving better balance and overall fitness!
Single-leg Stand
Shutterstock
The single-leg stand is a fundamental balance exercise that tests your static balance and lower-body stability. It’s beneficial for identifying imbalances between your left and right sides.
This exercise engages the stabilizing muscles in your ankles, knees, and hips, promoting joint health and reducing the risk of injuries. Additionally, it enhances proprioception, which is your body’s ability to sense its position in space, which is crucial for maintaining balance and coordination in everyday activities and athletic pursuits.
Advertisement
Stand tall with your feet together. Lift your right foot off the ground and bend your knee to form a 90-degree angle. Hold this position for 30 seconds to a minute without letting your hips tilt or your standing knee wobble. Switch to your left foot and repeat. To increase the difficulty, try closing your eyes or standing on an unstable surface like a foam pad.
10 Best Balance Exercises To Keep You Active & Mobile as You Age
Tree Pose
Shutterstock
A staple in yoga, the tree pose improves static balance, focus, and proprioception and strengthens the muscles around your ankles and knees. By requiring you to balance on one leg while maintaining a specific posture, the tree pose enhances your mental concentration and mindfulness.
It encourages proper alignment and posture, which can translate to better overall body mechanics. Additionally, the tree pose stretches the groin, inner thighs, chest, and shoulders, contributing to flexibility and muscle balance.
Stand with your feet together and your arms at your sides. Shift your weight onto your left foot and place the sole of your right foot against your inner left thigh or calf (avoid placing it directly on the knee). Bring your hands together in front of your chest in a prayer position. Hold for 30 seconds to a minute, then switch sides. For an added challenge, extend your arms overhead or close your eyes.
Single-leg Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
Shutterstock
The single-leg RDL targets your hamstrings, glutes, and core while challenging your dynamic balance. It’s excellent for improving stability and strength in the posterior chain. This exercise enhances hip mobility and can help correct muscular imbalances that often lead to injuries.
By engaging your core muscles throughout the movement, the single-leg RDL promotes better posture and alignment, reducing the strain on your lower back. This exercise is particularly beneficial for athletes, as it mimics the movements required in many sports that involve running, jumping, and changing directions.
Advertisement
Stand on your right leg with a slight bend in the knee. Hinge at your hips, extending your left leg straight behind you while lowering your torso toward the ground. Keep your back flat and your hips squared to the floor. Reach your hands toward the ground or hold a weight for added resistance. Return to the starting position and repeat for eight to 12 reps before switching legs.
Strength or Balance Training: Which Is More Important as You Age?
Split Squat
Shutterstock
The split squat enhances lower-body strength and balance, particularly in the quadriceps and glutes. It also helps improve hip mobility and stability. This exercise isolates each leg, allowing you to focus on developing unilateral strength, which can help correct muscular imbalances and improve overall leg strength.
By requiring you to stabilize your body in a split stance, the split squat engages your core muscles and promotes better balance and coordination. It’s a versatile exercise you can modify with weights or varying stances to target different muscle groups and intensities.
Start in a staggered stance with your right foot forward and left foot back, about two feet apart. Lower your body until your right thigh is parallel to the ground and your left knee nearly touches the floor. Keep your torso upright and your front knee aligned over your ankle. Push through your right heel to return to the starting position. Perform eight to 12 reps before switching legs.
Single-leg Squat to Box
Shutterstock
This exercise improves single-leg strength, balance, and coordination. It also helps identify and correct imbalances between your legs. You engage your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calves by performing a controlled squat on one leg, enhancing lower body strength and stability.6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e
The single-leg squat to box also challenges your core muscles to maintain proper alignment and balance, reducing the risk of lower back strain. This exercise can improve your performance in activities that require unilateral strength and stability, such as running, jumping, and changing directions.
Advertisement
Stand on your right leg in front of a box or bench. Slowly lower yourself into a squat, lightly tapping your glutes on the box. Keep your left leg extended in front of you and your torso upright. Push through your right heel to return to the starting position. Perform six to 10 reps before switching legs. Start with a higher box and gradually decrease the height as you get stronger.
Over 50? If You Can Do These 10 Strength Drills, You’re in Good Shape
Single-arm Plank
The single-arm plank challenges your core stability and upper-body strength and tests your ability to maintain balance with asymmetrical loading. Lifting one arm off the ground forces your core muscles, particularly the obliques and transverse abdominis, to work harder to stabilize your body.
This exercise also engages your shoulders, chest, and back muscles, promoting upper-body strength and endurance. The single-arm plank improves your coordination and balance, making it an excellent addition to any functional training routine.
Begin in a standard plank position with your hands directly under your shoulders and your body in a straight line. Lift your right hand off the ground and extend it straight before you or keep it by your side. Hold for 10 to 20 seconds, keeping your hips level and your core engaged. Switch to your left hand and repeat. To increase the difficulty, try lifting the opposite leg simultaneously.
Advertisement
Suitcase Carry
Shutterstock
The suitcase carry tests your dynamic balance, grip strength, and core stability. It mimics carrying a heavy object in one hand, which requires significant stabilization. This exercise engages your obliques, shoulders, and grip muscles, promoting overall functional strength.
The suitcase carry also improves your posture by encouraging you to maintain an upright position while carrying an asymmetrical load. It’s a practical exercise that enhances your ability to perform everyday tasks, such as carrying groceries or lifting objects, with better balance and reduced risk of injury.
Hold a heavy dumbbell or kettlebell in your right hand at your side. Stand tall with your shoulders back and your core engaged. Walk forward for 30 to 50 feet, maintaining an upright posture and avoiding leaning or twisting. Switch hands and repeat. Focus on keeping your steps controlled and even.
Are You Fit or Not? Find Out Instantly With a Trainer’s 5-Minute Test
Heel-to-Toe Walk
This exercise enhances dynamic balance and coordination, making it particularly useful for improving gait and stability. The heel-to-toe walk engages the muscles in your lower legs and feet, promoting strength and endurance in these areas.
This exercise challenges your proprioception and spatial awareness by requiring you to place one foot directly in front of the other, helping you maintain better balance and coordination. The heel-to-toe walk is an excellent exercise for older adults or anyone looking to improve their walking mechanics and reduce the risk of falls.
Advertisement
Stand with your feet together. Step forward with your right foot, placing your heel directly before your left toe. Continue walking straight, placing each heel directly before the opposite toe. Keep your eyes forward and your arms at your sides or extended for balance. Perform for 20 to 30 steps.
Lateral Shuffle
The lateral shuffle improves lateral movement, agility, and dynamic balance. It’s excellent for athletes who need to move quickly in different directions. This exercise engages your hip abductors, adductors, and quadriceps, promoting strength and stability in these muscle groups.
The lateral shuffle also enhances cardiovascular fitness and coordination, making it an excellent addition to high-intensity interval training (HIIT). By improving your ability to move laterally, this exercise can enhance your performance in sports and activities that require quick direction changes, such as basketball, tennis, and soccer.
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Shuffle to your right by pushing off your left foot and stepping your right foot to the side. Follow with your left foot, keeping your feet apart and your movements quick and controlled. Shuffle for 10 to 20 feet, then switch directions. Perform for 30 to 60 seconds.
Three-way Toe Taps
This exercise tests your balance and proprioception in multiple directions. It strengthens your ankles, calves, and core. Tapping your toes in different directions challenges your ability to maintain balance while shifting your weight, promoting better coordination and stability.
Advertisement
The three-way toe taps engage your hip flexors, glutes, and lower leg muscles, enhancing overall lower-body strength and endurance. This balance exercise is particularly beneficial for improving your ability to perform multi-directional movements, such as those required in sports and daily activities.
Stand on your right leg with a slight bend in the knee. Tap your left toes forward, to the side, and then behind you, returning to the starting position after each tap. Keep your torso upright and your movements controlled. Perform eight to 12 taps in each direction before switching legs.
BILOXI, Miss. (WLOX) – People feel called to exercise for many reasons — whether it be weight loss, heart health, or recreation. But for one woman on the Coast, it’s fueling her quest to be the best mother she can be.
Bridgette Hamlett is a safety worker at Chevron, a volunteer firefighter, a mother and an endurance athlete.
Hamlett was a college softball player, but her dedication to endurance training did not come until after the birth of her second child.
“One day, I was just doing a CrossFit workout post-partum. I was a couple of months postpartum, and it just hit me: ‘This workout really sucks.’ I just thought about that deeper, and I just came up with the choice to learn to be okay with being uncomfortable,” Hamlett said.
Mental health and fitness
Hamlett said exercise helped boost her mental health after the birth of her second child.
Advertisement
“After my second son, I did have postpartum depression, and I was very fortunate to have a husband that did pay attention to me and was able to notice the signs, but I think that if I didn’t have my workout community and I wasn’t working out the way that I was, it could have went a lot worse,” Hamlett said.
According to the Mississippi State Department of Health, based on 2021 data, nearly 21% of women in the state reported symptoms of postpartum depression.
Hamlett is encouraging new mothers to take up fitness.
“Pregnancy in itself is kind of rough. So, I think staying active while pregnant is the biggest tip I can give anyone,” Hamlett said. “It gave me an outlet and a way to feel refreshed when I started getting really anxious about things. It is 100% the best medicine for that.”
Hamlett still feels the call to challenge herself, hoping to teach her kids valuable lessons in the process.
Advertisement
“Constantly, in my mind I’m thinking, ‘Man, if I quit, then I show them it’s okay to quit, and if I keep going, I show them that hard work does pay off,’” Hamlett said. “I just want to show my kids that it is okay to be uncomfortable, and that’s just life.”
Hamlett has her eyes set on the Clash Endurance Duathlon, prepping for over 20 miles of running and biking.
See a spelling or grammar error in this story? Report it to our team HERE.
Editor’s note: Before beginning any new exercise program, consult your doctor. Stop immediately if you experience pain.
Interested in boosting your longevity? All you may have to do is vary your exercise. Switching between activities such as walking, swimming, yoga, gardening and pickleball could result in a whopping 19% decrease in your chance of death from all causes, according to recent research.
“A 19% decrease is a big deal,” said Dr. James Voos, chief of orthopedics at University Hospitals in Westlake, Ohio, who was not involved in the study. “When you look at the literature, anything that has that significant of a response should encourage us to take a look at our habits.”
An international team of scientists pored over data from two large cohort studies involving more than 110,000 people whose physical activity was assessed over 30 years. The findings, published in the journal BMJ Medicine in January, showed that those who had the largest variety in their physical activity lived the longest.
Engaging in many different forms of movement could also be more beneficial than doing the same activity for a longer amount of time, the researchers found.
Advertisement
“That was the most surprising part of the study,” said Dr. Han Han, one of the study’s two first authors and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “We’re usually thinking more about the quantity of exercise. These results add a new dimension to the existing evidence in this field.”
Adults should be getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every week, according to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, published by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The guidelines also advise adults to do muscle-strengthening activities of moderate or greater intensity at least twice per week, and note that varying your exercises can prevent overuse injuries.
“Engaging in a variety of exercises is definitely beneficial,” Voos said. “Your body needs different ranges of motion, strength and stability, and cross-training lets your body see all of those different movements each week.”
This is especially true for children. Sports medicine experts have long encouraged kids to play multiple sports and not to specialize in one at a young age. A raft of data on the topic shows children who specialize in a sport when young have an increased risk of injury, while those who don’t specialize tend to be healthier, are less bored with exercise and enjoy greater sports achievements when they are older.
But adults and even professional athletes need to vary their routines, too. Voos, who is also head team physician for the Cleveland Browns, said NFL football players at training camp might do a lot of conditioning one day, then work on flexibility and balance the next, then move onto strength training, all of which is intermixed with playing football.
Advertisement
“So even at the highest levels, our athletes are exposing their bodies to different motions,” Voos said.
Another plus to shaking things up with your exercise routine, especially if you prefer one activity, is that it helps prevent the plateau effect. The plateau effect is a period of time when progress in your favored sport stops, because your body has become very efficient at the movements. To overcome such pauses, you need to change your movement routine and stimulate your body in different ways.
While changing up your exercise is important for many reasons, experts don’t have specific recommendations for how many different exercises you need to do each week or month to achieve the most benefit. But it’s important to work all of your muscle groups each week, if possible, to strengthen them all.
This doesn’t mean you have to run to the gym every day so you can alternate between the treadmill, rowing machine and weights. If you like walking, for example, use trekking poles every other day to give your arms some exercise. Or alternate cycling with digging in the garden.
Keep in mind even simple exercises done at work or home are beneficial, too.
Advertisement
“Do squats at your desk or push-ups on the wall,” Voos said. “Take a break and walk around the parking lot. Contract your abs while sitting to improve your core strength, which is important for balance. It doesn’t have to be the most sophisticated thing. Anything you can sneak in is great.”
Pumped up about creating a new exercise regimen that might help extend your longevity? Remember it’s also crucial to your health to incorporate rest days into your program. Much as varying your workouts can help prevent overuse injuries and boredom, regular rest days will enhance your overall health. It’s during these rest days, experts say, that your body repairs tissues and refills energy stores, among other crucial functions.
But rest days don’t mean laying on the couch all day. It’s best to be active, perhaps by incorporating some gentle stretching throughout the day.
“Just keep your body moving,” Voos said.
Melanie Radzicki McManus is a freelance writer who specializes in hiking, travel and fitness.
Advertisement
Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.
Back in the ’90s, aerobics was all the rage and I’d spend hours every week jumping around to Zumba and step. This was fun in my 20s, but not so feasible in my late 40s with my post-labour pelvic floor.
These days, I like my cardio to be low impact and many of my personal training clients who are over 40—and dealing with pelvic floor, back or knee issues—feel the same.
If this sounds familiar, then check out this 20-minute strength-building routine certified trainer Britany Williams posted on Instagram, as a teaser for her Daily 20 workout program on the Sweat app. It features no jumping and is designed to build strength and muscle efficiently.
Article continues below
Low-impact cardio workout
“Use a lighter dumbbell than you usually would for a strength-focused workout,” Williams tells Fit&Well. “The goal is not to lift as heavy as possible in this cardio workout—it’s to be able to hold continuous movement for the duration of the effort.
“Choose a light enough dumbbell that you can do the movement for the allotted time without needing rest. If you need to do it bodyweight, that’s fine! Dumbbells are optional to increase challenge and difficulty.”
Benefits of low-impact cardio
“Low-impact cardio has a ton of benefits,” says Williams. “It improves cardiovascular health without joint stress and high-impact forces that you typically get with jumping or running.
“Exercises like these can build muscle strength and overall metabolic health, and adding dumbbells increases the metabolic demand placed on the body, compared with doing the exercises with just your bodyweight. This elevates the heart rate enough to improve cardiovascular fitness.”
Start your week with achievable workout ideas, health tips and wellbeing advice in your inbox.
Advertisement
Williams told me that all the exercises in the Sweat program are full-body moves, which elevate the heart rate and boost the cardiovascular system, helping your heart and lungs function more efficiently and effectively.
“This can also increase calorie burn compared to working isolated muscle groups,” she adds. “For example, doing a squat and press—where the legs and arms move together—is going to burn more than doing a traditional shoulder press from a static standing position. Burning calories can help support fat loss if that’s one of your goals.
What is the Daily 20 Challenge?
Williams explained that Sweat’s Daily 20 Challenge is a low-impact four-week plan suitable for all fitness levels and can be done at home or the gym with minimal equipment. All you need is a pair of dumbbells and 20 minutes.
“The plan was created for women looking to build consistency and progress in their workout routine,” says Williams. “Often women want to get back into workouts, but either don’t know where to start or don’t have the time for an hour in the gym—this program was built to meet them where they’re at.”
Advertisement
The program consists of five 20-minute workouts a week, but if you have more time you can stack them together for a longer session. If it’s an extra busy week just choose three workouts to focus on. The plan has a mix of lower, upper and full body workouts, as well as mobility and core, and low-impact cardio.
To follow the program, you need to be a member of Sweat ($24.99 a month or $134.99 a year after a seven-day free trial) and the price includes the entire library of workouts, programs and fitness content from all Sweat trainers. Plus, there are regular fitness challenges, recipes and nutritional education.
Shop the look
In her Instagram Reel, Williams is wearing effortless lift blue cycling shorts and a white soft motion racer back vest with in-built bra from Oner Active.
