Easy 10 Minute Balance Workout
Coach Lindsay: Hello, and welcome, everybody, to today's Weekly Balance. I'm Coach Lindsay. Today we're going to be taking you through seven balance exercises. And I'll run you guys through a little bit about what we will do. While I do that, go ahead and grab a chair or have a chair close by, and that's all you need. It will help if you can be barefoot because we know that shoes can hinder our balance a little bit. If you can, be barefoot for this. If not, that's okay too. And if you are just here to watch and get ideas, that's also perfect.
Coach Lindsay: While you guys grab some of the chairs and get some space free for you to do this workout, I'll go over the seven exercises we will focus on for this balance. We will be doing a lot of single-leg balancing, using our upper body as added movement or mimicking movements that we would have on a day-to-day basis.
Coach Lindsay: I'm excited to get started. What we're going to start with here is just a march. Okay, everybody, join me here in a march. As I always talk about, warming up is critical even though we're doing a light balance workout.
Coach Lindsay: We'll add some arms to this in a couple of seconds here. I'll show you what that looks like, but you keep marching. We're going to bring our arms up, and down every time we bring our legs up. Okay, everybody, join me here. We'll focus on adding that upper body momentum while balancing on one foot. The higher your foot, the more challenging it is. If you need to hover your foot over the floor here, that's fine. Whatever is most comfortably challenging for you. Getting our heart rates up a little bit, you're probably going to start to feel a little warm during this, and that's okay. We got about five more seconds here. Three, two, and one. Awesome jobs! We know the core is key for balance as well. That was a good one to start with.
Coach Lindsay: The next thing we're going to do is, we're always going to start everything we do on our right foot. Stand on your right foot, balance your left leg up, and we'll come out and do some forward arm circles here. The bigger the circle, the more challenging it becomes. The smaller the circle, the easier it is. You could choose your intensity. If you need to tap that foot down to catch yourself, that's perfectly fine. But ideally, we want to have that foot up the entire time. Go ahead and switch directions. This time, we're moving our arms backward, still bouncing on that right leg the best you can. Awesome, we got about five more seconds here. Three, two, and one.
Coach Lindsay: Anything we do on one side, we always do on the other to make sure we're balancing things out. Stand on that left leg now. The right leg goes out in front of you. And we're in with our forward motion arm circles here. Again, the bigger the circle, the more challenging it gets. The smaller the circle, the easier it gets. For a little extra challenge, you can even close your eyes and see how well you do. I encourage you to do it, even for one second. Everybody just close your eyes for one or two seconds. See, it affects your balance. I think that's a good thing to practice in some of these. Go ahead and hit with the backward circles now. Awesome. And about five more seconds here. Awesome job!
Coach Lindsay: I don't know about you guys, but that's also an excellent upper-body workout. The next thing we're going to do, gives our upper body a little bit of a break here, and we're going to do the same thing where we're standing first on our right leg, left leg goes up, and we're doing some ankle circles here. Okay? What you do with your arms is totally up to you. You can have them out your side, you can have them out to your side, up, across your chest, whatever. It should give you a challenge here. You can even have your hands on your hips for more stability. Hold it here. I know this one's challenging.
Coach Lindsay: Five more seconds! Five, four, three, two, and one. Awesome job! Same thing on the other side. Okay, you are standing on your left leg, right leg out. Now add ankle rotations, the direction you rotate your ankles doesn't matter because we're not switching directions in this one. If you want to go clockwise or counterclockwise, it doesn't matter. Whatever you're comfortable with. This is also a nice angle stretch. I love combining balancing stretches and getting the benefits of both in the exercise.
Coach Lindsay: Once again, play with your arms; whatever you want to do up to your side, you can try closing your eyes on this one too. Totally up to you. Keep holding it; I know you can feel this in your legs because you're working small, tiny muscles for that balance. Hang in there. Five more seconds here. Three, two, and one fantastic job. Feel free to also get a good burn through your hips and legs.
Coach Lindsay: The next thing we're going to do during this chat time you have your chair next to you just in case, but for this one, I would have it even closer because this one's a little bit of a challenge here. Okay, we're going to start with state, standing on the left leg and tucking our right leg. Okay, that means we're just bringing our leg out and back in. The idea here is that you want to ensure that you're not touching in the center. Okay, we're hovering in the center. Our left leg or our right leg is over the ground, not touching the entire time. If you need to touch, that's fine, but try to use your chair first.
Coach Lindsay: We'll do about two more here, two and one, and we'll switch sides. On the other side, rotate your chair to the other side if you need to have it there for support. And we're abducting our left leg standing on our right leg. Okay, out, in, out, and not touching when you come to the center unless you need to, which I did because I lost my balance. It's okay if it happens.
Coach Lindsay: You'll probably start to feel that burn here. An outer hip area. It's a good thing, I promise. I'll do about three more here. Three, two, and one. Awesome job. Okay, again, shake out and get your bearings. I know we're working. My heart rate is up. Don't undress me about its workout.
Coach Lindsay: Okay, the next thing we're going to do is side lunges. Don't let that word scare you, though. I know lunges can be intimidating, but you don't have to make a full lunge. Okay, what we're doing is we're bringing in the previous exercise of abductors into this exercise. Okay, I'm going to show you. First, we're going to abduct, step, bend, and come back. The deeper you go, the harder it is. If you don't want to lunge, you can simply step out, have that slight bend in your knee and come back.
Coach Lindsay: Okay, join me here. This is working on that abduction movement, but also then catching yourself with the other leg too. I love this because it mimics a lot of our active activities of daily living that we do.
Coach Lindsay: Few more here. Again, when you come to the center, try not to touch. We'll do two more. Awesome. Okay, the same thing on the other side. Give yourself plenty of room. And we are abducting, landing, bending, and pushing back. Okay, one fluid motion. We are hovering that left leg over when you come to the center, not touching.
Coach Lindsay: And again, feel free to go as deep as you want into that one, you can go all the way down, or you can simply slightly bend at the knee. Listen to your body always. Keep going. You guys are doing fantastic! You have a few more exercises here. We'll do three more here.
Coach Lindsay: All right, shake those legs out. Again. Get your breath, get some water if you need to, we have two more exercises. Okay, these last two are a little bit easier. For this next one, we're going to be doing heel-to-toe steps.
Coach Lindsay: We're going to pretend like we're walking on a straight line or a tightrope. And what we want to do is take two steps forward and two steps back. I'll demonstrate here, starting with whatever foot you want, it doesn't matter, we're going to come heel to toe, one, two, and then backward. One, two.
Coach Lindsay: Where you put your hands makes a difference here. Make sure you're staying heel to toe here. Pretend like you're walking on a tightrope, heel to toe. My mat gets messed up here when I do this, but that's okay. You can also do this by walking in a circle, depending on how much space you have. That can also kind of help with your balance. But for now, I'm in a straight line.
Coach Lindsay: Again, one to two steps back. Two steps forward, we got about ten more seconds here for you—three, two, and one. Awesome job! I love practicing that when I'm even just walking through the grocery store. It's like walking heel to toe when you're pushing your cart instead of walking normally. You might look a little funny, but who cares? You're doing what's right for you. Practice that next time you're in the store!
Coach Lindsay: The next thing you're going to do – and we're going to need our chairs for this – is one of my favorite balance exercises. And I'll probably do it every single session, and their chair squats. Because chair squats mimic our activities of daily living, when we get up and down from the floor, we get up in and out of chairs all the time. What we're gonna do is really simple: we're just going to sit in our chairs and come back up.
Coach Lindsay: Now, how much you sit on this chair will determine the difficulty. If you just let your butt touch the chair and come right back up, it's going to be a bit harder. If you let yourself sit back and come back up, it might be a little easier or more challenging, depending on your core strength. Play around with that a little bit. Again, play around with your arm placement. I tend to gravitate towards having them close to my chest because that's easy. But the further away your arms get, the more balance you lose. Having your arms anywhere outside your body will increase that challenge.
Coach Lindsay: Awesome job. All right, you guys. You don't need the chair anymore because we're done here for the last 10 to 20 seconds. We're just going to march it out. We're going to bring our heart rate down. I know those chair squats can get your heart rate up. I know mine's up. The blood is flowing. It's always good to slowly bring your heart rate back down. And that's seven exercises for balance. The more you do those, the better your balance will get. Okay. Thank you guys for joining me today. I appreciate your time out of your day. And I really look forward to seeing you guys next week for more balance. Have a great rest of your day.
