46 The Balance Training Trend is on Shakey Ground

The InForm Fitness Podcast

Adam Zickerman and MikeRogers discuss something the vast majority of us take for granted every day, our balance. Some of the myths and facts regarding the maintenance of our balance through the myriad training methods practiced in gyms all over the country, some of which are downright dangerous.

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46 The Balance Training Trend is on Shaky Ground Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

balance, unstable, walking, surface, leg, exercise, trainers, sensory input, called, problems, people, sensory receptors, standing, stable, fitness, improve, muscles, confidence, motor skill, adam

SPEAKERS

Tim Edwards, Mike, Adam

Adam 00:05

So based on current research I and inform fitness in general does not recommend the use of unstable surfaces outside of a rehabilitative setting. Physical therapy, exercise performed on unstable surfaces does not transfer well to stable surfaces or our everyday life. Nor do the risks outweigh the beneficial adaptation. Some experts even believe that there may be a reduction in stable surface performance for the same exercise. When developing training programs for clients fitness practitioners, a must focus solely on safe, intense strength training.

Tim Edwards 00:46

That of course, was New York Times best selling author and founder of inform fitness, Adam Zickerman. I'm Tim Edwards with the inbound podcasting network and a client of inform fitness. Shortly we will be joined by Adam and his general manager and trainer of the inform fitness location right there in the heart of New York City, just about five or six blocks east of the base of Central Park. Here in Episode 46, Adam and Mike discuss something that the vast majority of us take for granted every day, our balance, they will discuss some of the myths and facts regarding the maintenance of our ever so important balance through the myriad of training methods practiced in gyms all over the country, some of which are downright dangerous. So how do you safely train to improve your balance? Well, let's hear from the experts.

Adam 01:34

So the thing about balance is that most of us take our balance for granted. Man, I don't think any of us think twice about walking across a gravel driveway, or transitioning from walking on a sidewalk onto grass, or getting out of bed in the middle of night without stumbling. I mean, it's just things that just we do, we don't think about it. And believe it or not, there are people that have impaired balance, meaning activities, like I just mentioned, can be extremely fatiguing, hard to do. And dangerous. I mean falls I mean, especially older individuals. And there's so much confusion about balancing what balance actually is, and all the myriad factors that influence balance, and our esteemed. Our esteemed exercise industry, as usual, oversimplifies the solution to improving one's balance, mainly because they don't even understand all the parameters of balance and all the things that go into somebody's balance. And of course, you know, as a result of not understanding it, and over simplifying it, you know, most of the recommended exercises to improve balance are best ineffective, and at worst, they can actually lead to more injury. So the story about balance, it kind of reminds me of the same story about saturated fat absolutely how its still bad for you to have saturated fat. And the reason the balance and the saturated fat story kind of are similar to each other is because on the surface, it seems very logical that saturated fat must be bad for you, right? I mean, how could it not be? I mean, you can practically see the gobs of fat clogging your arteries as you eat it. But still, there is no compelling evidence backing this idea up. Yet, despite the fact that there's no compelling evidence, researchers are still warning us against its consumption and skew the results actually to fit their argument. And we talked about that in depth. In podcast, which one Tim

Tim Edwards 03:16

it was episode 34 titled is the American Heart Association misleading us about coconut oil? So we go certainly deeper into it about some of the studies and how some of those studies are incredibly outdated, which are telling us that saturated fats are harmful for us.

Adam 03:31

So you know, that's another example of this idea that it must be true, because how can saturated fat not be bad for you, and we try to support our beliefs, our biases, and the same thing with balance. You see, there's a growing trend in our fitness industry now. And it's the use of these unstable surfaces during resistance training. You know, if you walk through any local gym or Personal Training Studio in the functional training gyms, you'll see bozhou domes, air disc balance boards, and some professionals, a lot of professionals actually are claiming that unstable surfaces, increased balance, proprioception, which is the ability for the body to know where it is and how it is moving in space, and of course, core stability. All right, well, at first glance, as with the saturated fat story, at first glance, it's easy to see why most of the population would believe such claims. I mean, if you balance on an unstable surface, why wouldn't you be able to bounce better on a stable surface? If your core is constantly contracting? To maintain your center of mass? Why wouldn't your core stability improve? And while these claims seem logical, the truth of the matter is current research has not been able to support any of this. So first things first, let's define balance as it's truly defined in the medical world. So simply put balance is the ability to maintain the body center of gravity over its base of support. And a properly functioning balance system allows us to do four things really alright. First, it allows us to see clearly while we're moving or Vision. Alright, it also balance allows us to identify orientation with respect to gravity, three, it determines direction and speed of movement. And then, with those three abilities, it also helps us make automatic postural adjustments to maintain posture and stability in various conditions and activities. Now, balance is achieved and maintained by a complex, a very complex set of sensory motor control systems. And that includes sensory input from several sources, our sight, our touch, which is called proprioception, and something called the vestibular apparatus within the ears, our inner ear, and that stimuli input from motion, equilibrium spatial orientation. So already you can see this is kind of complicated stuff. And there are there are disciplines and just this balance alone, I mean, ear nose and throat doctors deal with this regular basis. ophthalmologists deal with this on a regular basis, neurologists deal with people with balance problems on a regular basis, because that's what balance is part of it's part of our neuro system, our visual system, and our inner ear. All these things contribute to our balance, then is the integration of all the sensory input, and then the motor output to the eye and skeletal muscles that react to the sensory input. And all along this chain things can go wrong and affect our balance, injury, disease, certain drugs, and even just the aging process...