Whats Involved

Most people balance using their vision as a guide but the body is rammed full of sensory receptors for balance that just don’t get exploited to the max. The biggest of all is your inner ear. This gets a lot of work just keeping you standing but you can make it much more fine tuned by doing any of the below exercises with your eyes closed. That way you’re training just your inner ear and other senses.
The other major one is touch and I don’t mean your hands and body as yur collapse to the floor in a heap. I mean the soles of your feet! They offer constant feedback on the exact placement, distribution and state of your upper body position. Listen to your feet – after all its them that normally have to do the jigging when you’re about to fall over. Its for this reason strong feet are vital.

Different Types

Balance isn’t all one big chunk of skill. It’s multifaceted. You can be very effective at not being thrown in judo but utterly useless at holding the warrior posture in yoga. So what gives? Well here’s a few of the different types of balance…

Static vs. Dynamic – Keeping a static position requires your brain to keep a single point and correct based on that. In a dynamic balancing act your brain has the opportunity to reset at each point and so it can almost keep itself corrected. An example is how much easier it is for you to walk compared to standing still on one leg. When you’re walking you’re in motion all the time whereas in one standing spot you’ve less room for error.

Predictable vs. Unpredictable – Just because you can hold a a great pose in yoga doesn’t count for squat if someone tries to throw you. You need to train yourself seperately for both predictable and unpredictable changes in your body positioning. This has a lot to do with reflex speed, experience of the potential changes, etc. Fighting in judo, ju jutsu, karate, etc will do great things for your unpredictable balance training as it trains your reflexes.

Point, Multi-Point and Lines – Standing on one leg is very different to standing toe-heel in a straight line. In a line your brain has two main directions to fall but on a single point you’ve got all directions. Its complicate again if you’ve multipe points (e.g. one leg and one arm). Each can support the other and in the case of your two legs – they work well together. But try balancing on one leg and one arm and it gets harder. Train in this.

Use Your Second Set of Hands

Those things at the end of your legs used to be used like hands by your ancestors. A great way of improving your balance and leg control at the same time is to start using them as hands again. Opening doors with your feet (right AND left). I do this when my hands are filled with drinks – adds to the challenge a bit but its great for improving your steadiness.

Dress Standing

This is a classic and one of the first recommendations for improving your balance. Put your shoes and socks on while standing. there’s no need to sit to do these and the more you challenge your body to balance the better you’ll get at it.

Calf Raises

People don’t seem to realise just how effective a set of calf raises can be. They fail to notice the jiggery pokery their ankles are doing as they up & down on their toes. Calf raises shift your centre of gravity and cause your body to compensate. This is good – practice it.

Tightrope Walking

Not literal tightrope walking but walking toe-heel in a straight line will help test your dynamic line balance.

Slow Kicks

Perform slow, controlled kicks and aim to keep as steady as possible. You’ll also find this works the legs and abs too.

Yoga

I know I keep banging on about this but yoga will help your balance loads. Even the basic stances require some balance and its also got a lot of variety. Because as with any other form of exercise you can run the risk of becoming good at the exercise and not much better at your overall goal. Yoga challenges your balance in lines, points, moving and static. No other exercise programme can boast that level of all-round challenge except maybe classical wushu.

Balance – this has improved and still gets better every time I do another session. There’s a lot of positions that require great balance. So what impact has it had on my ju jutsu? Well balance is pretty damn important to staying on your feet and its getting people off your feet that’s one of the keys in JJ. So its helped to some extent with that though not as much as you’d expect. You see the yoga is done without resistance – its basically static balancing while performing a posture. Although it does help with balance you’re not training yourself to stay standing during pulls and pushes with aggressive changes in direction as you do in JJ. Its still come in handy though.

Flexibility – This has been great. Its becoming harder for my partners or opponents to put on locks and holds due to an increase in flexibility.

Core Strength – this has had the greatest impact of all and my core is a lot, lot stronger from doing yoga than 50 days of a core heavy training programme. It works your entire abs, back, obliques, and deep core. You have to apply locks (suck you stomach in) while performing many of the moves. There’s also numerous exercises requiring you to lift you legs off the ground and arse while pulling your abs in to keep off the ground. Core strength is one of the vital components of ju jutsu and a storng core really helps in every sphere from powering punches and kicks to working on the ground to get the advantage. Your core is the powerhouse of every other muscle group so when this gets stronger YOU get stronger.

Verdict: Go for it if you can fit it into your existing schedule!

Oh how I hurt.  I used to think Ashtanga made you sweat and heave a lot but it wasn’t much of a workout as such.  Certainly not as intense as say a ‘proper’ strength or conditioning workout.

Put simply: I was wrong!

In the past I struggled to do the first 10 sun salutations but this time I managed them with relative ease.  So I went further into the programme and it got more and more difficult.  For the core its full of bridges, L-Sits, V-Sits, downward dogs, etc etc.  It also works the shoulders, forearms and arms a lot too as my arms were like lead afterwards.

It was the most incredible workout though and I’m definately doing it more often.  I just wish my area had a teacher but for now I’ll have to make do with the DVD – its a great DVD, but I want feedback on how I’m doing.

Oh – and I had a shoulder stand for a few seconds too.  I almost got it!!

Read about Ashtanga Yoga at Wikipedia.