Balance: A Vital Component to your Strength Chain

Balance is an issue for so many people, but often gets overlooked in exchange for looking better, getting stronger, and losing fat.  However balance plays an immense role in all of these ultimate goals.  Balance also starts at your feet but is closely related to the strength of stability of your abdominal wall.

So what the heck am I talking about?  I’m talking about the relationship between your abs/core/stomach/torso, whatever you want to call it and your feet.  When these two areas are working well, you have little to no pain, you are strong and able to utilize your strength readily, and you have a much higher output into your workouts.  You are able to create tension in strength movements, but also perform more high level exercises by utilizing your strong and stable abdominal wall and sure balance.

So how do you train balance and your abdominals to be able to maximize their benefit?  Step one is to trash the sneakers, or running shoes when you perform weight training workouts.  If you must have footwear, I suggest Vibram Five Fingers or footwear that has a pliable sole so that your foot is forced to do most of the work (the foot has literally hundreds of nerve endings and small muscles that has balance as its primary job).  Just by losing the heavy, thick footwear, you train your body for better balance and reduce dramatically the risk of injury.

As for your abs?  Stability exercises, which is the abdomen’s primary job are the best for training for a stronger mid-section.  Exercises like Planks (variations), rotational exercises like Wood Chops, or stability with movement like Flutter kicks, and Wipers all will work well to build strong stability and a strong relationship with the improved balance you will experience with training barefoot.

I have seen with the addition of these details to a training program the increase of strength in my clients as well as with myself.  My clients, after training barefoot or pliable soled shoes, can lift heavier in their deadlift and when they train their mid-section with the above mentioned exercises, their back pain diminishes and their posture improves, not to mention their strength shoots through the roof.

Think of the body as a series of links as in chain.  Every joint is a link.  When all the links work together, it is a very strong series of links.  However when there are weak spots or links, the chain loses a lot of its strength and will eventually break (in terms of the body, result in injury).  Strengthen all of your links for your full potential.