Bill from Beyond Fitness Online walks you through a six-point balance test: hold increasingly hard stances for 15 seconds each, from feet together to single-leg with eyes closed. One point per stance. Then do rapid head turns at your level to improve, retest, and see if you've gotten better.
How good is your balance really? I'm going to take you through a progression that tests your balance at different levels, and you'll actually have a quantifiable number to put on it. Hi, I'm Bill from Beyond Fitness Online, and today we're going to test your balance. Now, I'm going to start you off with the easiest level. We're going to progress our way through it. Each level that you're able to do gets you 1 point. Once we have your score, then I'm going to show you how to improve it. So here's the first thing we're going to do. We're going to start off by putting our feet together next to each other, just like that, standing nice and tall, not touching anything. Make sure that we're on a flat ground, your eyes are open, and you're nice and relaxed. If you feel like you're swaying or aren't able to keep your balance here, then you scored a 1. If you are able to keep your balance here, then we're going to close your eyes. Okay. And we're going to stay there for 15 seconds. If you're still able to keep your balance there, you've got at least a 2. The next level is eyes are open, and we're going to go into what's called sharpened Rombergs. We're going to put one foot here and the other heel right on that toe. It's really important that both feet stay in line and that you don't have one foot cocked off to the side. We're going to stand there, and you're going to hold that for 15 seconds. If you don't fall over, that's great, you've passed. Now here's the caveat to this one. We want to do this both ways. So if your right foot's in front and you did well, switch them around and put your left foot in front. It's not uncommon to see that one side is harder than the other. So you may be a 3 on one side and a higher score on the other. That's okay, it's good to note that. Now if you were able to do that, good, you scored at least a 3. We're going to go back into that Sharpened Rombergs. Get your feet set up nice and even, and then close your eyes. Now you're going to start to see a lot more movement. This is about where I am, and it's more challenging that way. Again, test that left foot in front and right foot in front for about 15 seconds. If you're still going, fantastic, you're at a 4. Now let's take it to level 5. Level 5 is standing on one foot, With the other foot raised to about 90 degrees, not holding on to anything, you're nice and relaxed. Now from there, if you can do that, test it on the other foot, because again, we got the left foot and the right foot. And then if you can do that, we're going to go to level 6, the hardest level. We're in this position with the eyes closed, and that's where it starts to get really challenging. If you can hold that for 15 seconds on both sides, congratulations, you're fantastic with your balance. Now, whatever you did just score, 1 through 6, go one step behind that. So, for example, if you got to a 4 here with your eyes closed and that was hard, we're going to go to a 3. We're going to be here with the eyes open. So, just to take you through them all again, it's eyes open, feet together, eyes closed, feet together, Sharpen-Rombergs eyes open, Sharpen-Rombergs eyes closed. And then single leg stance, eyes open, and then single leg stance, eyes closed. So whatever you scored on, go back one level. So let's say it was here, and I'm going to do quick head turns to the left and the right. So I'm going to go here and then here, and you'll notice that as you turn the head left and right, it starts to get really challenging to keep your balance. There's a lot more reaction. After we've done about 10 head turns in each direction, we're going to do head turns up and down. So you're going to go here and then look down at your feet and then up at the ceiling and then back down at your feet. Again, do that about 10 times, then go back and test your balance again. So if I was here with my eyes closed was my top level, I'm going to close my eyes and see how I've improved. Again, don't forget to check it on both sides, but check to see if it's improved. Let me know what your score was in the comments below and if you were able to improve by doing these drills. It's very simple, it's easy to do. One, one safety note, make sure there's nothing around you that if you fall you're not going to get hurt, okay? And until next time, live healthy. Live healthy.
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