Easy 10-Minute Lower Body Balance Workout

Coach Lindsay: Thank you for joining another Weekly Balance. I'm Coach Lindsay, and I am super excited to walk you all through another set of balance exercises.

Coach Lindsay: Of course, we started this balanced series with our core population in mind, ensuring we're minimizing fall risk and making sure we're building up those leg and core muscles to just help with activities of daily living. I'm really excited to walk you guys through a jam-packed session today. Hang on tight. And let's go ahead and get started.

Coach Lindsay: All you're going to need today is just a chair. So same with all the other previous balance exercises, make sure you have a chair, or something to hang on to a wall is fine if you're doing this close to a wall. But let's get started with just a march as always, just getting our blood flowing, getting our heart rate up a little bit, and ensuring our muscles are nice and warm. Hopefully, everybody's having a good Thursday and staying cool. I know we have heat waves everywhere, especially where I'm at right now. So you might feel a little warm with this balanced workout just because of how hot it is everywhere. So hopefully, you guys are staying cool. You want that extra challenge. Bring your knees up a little higher here. Make sure you're swinging your arms with you to a great job. We'll be here for about another 10 seconds.

Coach Lindsay: Go ahead, shake your legs out, and get your arms nice and loose. Keep a nice, straight posture here. The first exercise we'll start with is nice and simple—just some butt kicks. We'll stand with our feet shoulder-width apart and sway side to side, bringing that leg up, trying to get your heel to your butt. Okay, so, rocking back and forth, making sure you're staying steady on that supporting leg, you can have your hands on your hips or out to your side, whatever is easier for you. And we'll be here for about 15 more seconds. Just getting those quads and hamstrings all warmed up.

Coach Lindsay: The next exercise we're going to do is a tree pose. So a lot of you, I'm sure, are familiar with this from doing various yoga. It's just kind of a nice balanced pose as well. So getting into that tree pose, we're going to start with planting our left leg on the ground. And then we're going to make a four with our legs here. Okay, so the lower your foot is to the ground, the easier it is, the more you bring your leg up to your chest, the harder it is. So find whatever gives you a good challenge but is also maintainable for the next 30 seconds here. And you can hold your hands on your hips or out to the side. Make sure you're creating a nice straight four here. We don't want that leg forward. We don't want it too far back. We're just nice and straight here.

Coach Lindsay: Great job. Anything that we always do on one side, you guessed it, we do on the other. So back into that tree pose here. Hands-on your hips, arms out to your side, you can never do anything without technical difficulties. And we'll hold here for about ten more seconds.

Coach Lindsay: Get those legs all shaken out. Grab some water if you need it. And now we get into some little bit more challenging work here. We may want to make sure that we have our chair close by for this one. So these are called standing bicycle crunches. So don't let that scare you. They're not that bad. But we're going to start again, with our left leg planted. Okay, so plant that left leg, and have your chair on the left side. We're going to start this exercise with our right arm up. And we're going to be bringing our left arm up, and we're going to be bringing our right leg up with our left leg planted. So we're going to meet our elbow and knee in the same position here. And join me when you're ready. Again, you have that chair there for support if you need it. But we're bringing that elbow to knee here with this exercise.

Coach Lindsay: You'd want to make sure you're not leaning forward and still keeping a broad chest. You're just slightly crunching those core muscles here. We'll do about two more here. And last one, awesome job. Check it out. That one is a really good core buster. It's a good standing core exercise, but it also works on balance without a planted supported leg. So again, with your chair close by, we're going to repeat the same thing on the other side. So plant that right leg, right arm goes up, and we'll be crunching here. Okay, so left leg up, right arm down.

Coach Lindsay: Great job, trying to ensure you're keeping that balance on that supporting right leg. The chest is nice and broad. And we're getting an elbow to knee here. We'll do about three more. Three, two. And one awesome job, you guys shake it out. We're about halfway done. We're moving through it.

Coach Lindsay: I have a little bit of a challenge for you guys coming up. So we're going to be doing three different exercises. And then, the last exercise will combine all three that we do. So hang tight; I'll walk you through it all. But the last exercise is meant to be a challenge. So don't worry if you can't follow through with it. But that's why you come back. That's why we repeat and get better.

Coach Lindsay: The first part of this compound exercise is reverse lunges. Again, don't be scared by the term lunge. We're not lunging or more. So stepping back with a slight bend in our knees. So we've done this in previous ones before. But we're going to start with planting our left leg, and we're just stepping back with that right leg. So watch me first, then follow me when you're ready. So we're stepping back, slight bend, and forward, back and forward. Awesome job. You want to try to get that back leg all the way on the floor, and you're gonna feel that nice stretch in your calf. That's why we're doing this. Great job. We'll do about three more here, three, two. And last one, great job.

Coach Lindsay: Same thing on the other side. So make sure again that you have that chair close by if you need it. We're planting that right leg, stepping back with that left leg. So when you're ready, step back. And forward. When you return to the center, you can tap your toe on the ground or hover for that extra balance challenge. So you can hover like this when you step back or touch when you meet in the middle, whatever. I don't want to say whatever is easiest because you want to challenge yourself but whatever you feel is best for you. Great job. We'll do three more, three, two, and one. Awesome job.

Coach Lindsay: That is the first exercise of our compound that we're going to do at the end. So the next exercise, we're going to do our high knees. So have that chair with you. These are nice and simple to where there are not a ton of like movements in these. So we're going to start with planting our left leg, bringing that right leg up. Okay, so just hands on the hip, up and down. And this one again, when you meet down in the middle, you can touch, or you can simply hover. Whatever is gonna give you a challenge. Check those legs out. It's getting warm.

Coach Lindsay: Same thing on the other side. Okay, so when you're ready, plant that right leg, and we're raising that left to meet up, okay? Really focusing on that balance. This is not a quick exercise. So go at your own pace. If you need to really take it slow to get that movement in that control. Then take it slow.

Coach Lindsay: I will show you one more exercise on each leg until we put all three of those together. So the last exercise here is going to be a calf raise. So we've all done these as well. For this one, have your chair close by. Even for me, I love having my finger on the chair just because it gives me better control with that muscle contraction in the calf. So if you hold on for the entire exercise, that is fine. If you want to go for a challenge, that's fine, too. So we're going to start with that left leg. So plant that left leg, and bring your right leg up, just slightly hovering over the ground. And we're raising that calf muscles are raising that calf up, raising that leg up, really contracting your calf.

Coach Lindsay: Again, this is not a quick exercise. We're not up and down like this. Okay, we're nice, slow, and controlled. Great job. Three more. Three. Two. Last one, guys. Great job. I started to feel that warmth in my calves. Shake them out, roll your ankles, I bet if you need to, that's such a good calf exercise, balance, exercise, everything. You can switch your chair over to the other side if needed. But we're planting our right leg, hovering our left leg, and you can join me when you're ready, up and down.

Coach Lindsay: Again, nice and slow, nice and controlled. Have at least a few fingers on that chair if you need it. We got one more exercise that is putting the last three together. So if you need to take a minute to catch your breath, or get some water, do that. But we're only going to do about five reps of these on each side with all exercises together. So I'll demonstrate first, you guys can join me when you're ready. But we're going to start with our feet shoulder-width apart. Okay, so we're going to start with that reverse lunge we did the first time, bring that high knee through, and add the calf raise. Okay, so all three together, step back, reverse lunge. The high knee comes through, and add the calf raise. You have that chair there. If you need it, please use it. Let's do two more together here. Step back into that reverse lunge. Bring that high knee through. Add the calf raise last one here, reverse lunge. Bring that high knee through and calf raise.

Coach Lindsay: Great job. That's a tough one. A lot of stuff was put together. A lot of muscles are working on your legs. Almost every muscle in that compound exercise is working in your leg. So we're going to do the same thing on the other side. Switch that chair over if you need it. And we are back at it again. We're stepping back to that reverse lunge by planting that right leg. We're bringing that high knee forward and adding the calf raise. Okay. So reverse lunge. Bring that high knee through. Calf Raise. We'll do three more here—reverse lunge. High knee through calf raise. Two more, you can do it. Last one here. Reverse lunge. High Knee through and cap raise. You did it. Awesome job.

Coach Lindsay: If that was super challenging, or you feel like you could only do like one or two of the exercises out of the three. Keep doing that. Keep coming back. Keep watching this video and practice until you can master it. So at the end here, we're going to end with my favorite sun salutation. We're starting to bring our heart rate down, relaxing our muscles. We're gonna bring our arms down and up.

Coach Lindsay: Deep breath. One more. Let's do three more. Why not? Right, I say one more. Inhale Exhale. Inhale. Exhale, last one. Inhale. Exhale. Awesome job. Thank you again so much for joining me for the Weekly Balance. I will see you guys back here, the week of the eighth for another weekly balance. I hope you guys have an amazing Thursday and enjoy the rest of your day!