Lessons

Lesson Info

Balance

Consider balance the ability to maintain a line of gravity within a base of support with minimal postural sway or collapse basically it's just being ableto move around about falling on your ass and that's my fancy way of saying that but essentially the balance is an incredibly neglected component and there's three different areas that you need to hit if you want rock solid balance and it's not hard when she grasped these concepts ok, so the first thing that you need to do is you need to work what's called your vestibular system so this is your ears you've got tiny little circles in your ears that are filled with fur fluid that detect your head and your neck movements and help to tell your body or help to tell your brain where your body is at in space based off of what's happening with those fluids so essentially healthy ears and a healthy vestibular system is one key component of balance so some of things you want to do if you're if you're serious about balance never hold yourself on a...

period okay you're always using your head set your speakerphone or using what's called an air tube headset which actually causes the signal to travel through tubes so you've got a lot less imf next to your head okay, so you avoid loud sounds loud music and holding your cell phone up to your ear if you're serious about your vestibular balance a lot of your ears. Sensory information comes from your feet, and so the more you can go barefoot or un shod or where a minimalist footwear, the better. Okay, so as much as I can, I take my shoes off. I do right now, but I have a really ugly feet that I do not want on tv. Um, balance on one leg while keeping your gaze on something stationary. That's another way that you can that you can train your your vestibular system. This actually causes the fluid in those in your ears to move around a little bit. Eventually, you look at objects farther away, and then you progress to keeping your eyes closed with that exercise. And then eventually you, percy ito an unstable surface. Now, if you really wanted tio geek out on this type of vestibular information, as well as the somatic sensory and visual information will get into a little bit more of in just a second. There's a company called z health that actually put you through certifications and teaches you and really detailed for matt how to do some of these exercises, like there's something called the vision, jim, that I absolutely love that's that's actually like a workout for your eyes that's fantastic for the visual section that will get into, um you look for things to stand on everyone around you so the more that you can like treat things like a kid when you're walking along the street every once in a while a jump on the curb and walk up on the curb balance on one foot engage yourself by getting on a different surfaces you know use things like this when you're at the gym all that stuff basically makes the fluid inside the years move around works the vestibular system now there is one supplement that's really, really important for your ears that tends to get underplayed when it comes to this singular balance and that's full eight now taking synthetic folic acid supplements is not a good idea because that can have some toxicity issues but working full eight from things like romaine lettuce, spinach, asparagus, turnip greens, mustard greens basically any dark leafy green and then some of those stink your vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower as well as beats having those type of things in your refrigerator can all be really, really good for your vestibular system. So that's component number one of balance component number two is your somatic sensory system. You've actually got sensors in each of your joints that allow for what's called appropriate exception or your brain to actually know where your joints are in space and there are ways that you can work your so matter sensory system as well standing on like thick mats or disk pillows or boast two balls like that some of this stuff kind of overlaps with ways that you constrain your vestibular system but anything that makes your joints wobbly, okay, anything that makes your joints wobbly is going to help out with your so matter sensory system you even hear about like rebounding a lot of people do rebounding to strengthen their lymphatic system and to jump start their metabolism at the beginning of the day that's where you jump up and down on those mini trampolines and a lot of people think that stuff is dominant doesn't work, but not only is it good for your lymph system but it's also good for your so mattis sensory system that's another really good way that you can train is using these many tram planes especially fuse a single leg standing with one leg but doing at an elevation like tricking your body into things king it's out in danger by standing on the edge of a curb you know with one leg up that's another really good way to train your somatic sensory system and you can stand on one leg while you brush your teeth while you're at the gym or you're lifting weights whenever I met the gym, I always trying to do at least one thing on one leg that's a really good way to train this matter sensory system as well and then just be careful. You know, you don't want to be the guy standing on the stability ball at the gym with, like a two hundred pound barbell on your back. You know, working your samat of sensory system at the same time you're building strength and power. Ok? That's, that's foolhardy. I don't recommend stuff like that kind of similar to speed. I recommend being careful, combining like high balance intensive activities with fatigue or with high amounts of weight so it can be dangerous. I just want to be careful, it's a pet peeve of mine when I see like a personal trainer at the gym, having their client do some incredible balancing move well, are, you know, hoisting a way over their head, it's it's a fast path to injury so then the last system is the visual system. Now, one thing that will show you during the bio hacking session, a seven hundred dollars set of glasses that I own that I was custom fitted for to not only block blue light, but also increased my visual perception and visual acuity. I'll tell you how to get him and where I got him and how to get a cheap version to if you wanted to. But basically really being careful when you're staring for long periods of time in a screen and also making sure that you look away from the screen and off into the distance at certain periods of time so your eyes are getting used to looking at close objects and far objects that's really important that you do like horizon scanning throughout the day especially if you work on a computer qilai antioxidant foods are really good for your eyes hi lutein foods egg whites or one of the best ways to destroy your vision because you're not getting any of the lutein that you need from that yoke to help out with your eyes so making sure that you eat eggs whole eggs or elsie egg yolk really really fantastic for the eyes fish as well is great for the eyes either eating fish regularly or including a triangle astride based fish oil and all geek out even more and what I mean when I say triglyceride during our supplement section but fish oil really good for the eyes play a sport that requires eye tracking golf tennis ping pong pretty much anything that's making move your eyes around make sure that you don't neglect that component of your life as well avoid small thoughts and eye strain sleeping you get a lot of visual and neuronal repair as well as rest for your eyes when you're sleeping seventy eight hours a night if you can and then finally if you if you go to the wikipedia page for the bates method, it'll give you a pretty good introduction to this idea of training your ocular muscles, which is what the bates method is, but that z health that I talked about they also have a more modern program called the vision jim that works really well that's another really good one and I'm pretty sure I've got that over a ben greenfield fitness dot com slash creative lives as well. Also you want to address imbalances, typical imbalances and folks v m o is that your vast ist media less oblique us it's the teardrop muscle located on the inner side your quads? This is notoriously weak and people and especially people have pain on the front of their knees. Ah week the emo tends to be the issue so pretty much anything where you're working your leg with your toe turns slightly out strengthens that v m o at the gym this is one of my faith favorite exercises to do just attaching a cable or an elastic band standing on one leg. So I'm getting so mattis sensory work here and I'm getting v m o work here that's a really great exercise to dio if you're just getting started, you could even just use the leg extension machine at the gym and do leg extensions with your toes turned out we can strike james we can strange usually that manifest in back pain typically the hamstrings need to be able to produce produce at least two thirds of the force of the quadriceps but in most cases we have quads and hamstrings strength imbalances sore hamstrings are usually not only a little bit too tight but they're also very, very weak in terms of their ability to stabilize our spine so one of the best ways to strengthen the hamstrings is to do what's called a romanian dead lift and you actually do not need wait for this I'm going to show you guys the version without wait because I combine cold thermo genesis one of the bio hacks that I do where I take a five minute cold shower in the morning with basically a dead lift that requires no wait I put my arms across my chest like this this turns on your butt and your hamstrings for the rest of the day it's a really cool move you just bend down like this and stick your butt out until your hamstrings get really tight then you squeeze your butt cheeks and standing you want to make sure you give your butt cheeks squeeze the whole time you stand and you come down again is called a good morning squeeze your butt cheeks and stand and I do this in the shower won't take a cold shower I don't sing well I'm doing it but I do like t maximize productivity. Great way to kill two birds with one stone so you get all the benefits of cold thermo genesis shutting down inflammation and jump starting your metabolism and you turn on. Your hammy is in your, but at the same time, so another imbalances week scapula. I told you that you need to poll as much as you push when you're at the gym and that's. Why? Because weak scapular results in shoulder pain and children balances your scapular, just your your shoulder blades that get activated when you pull, and then finally, weak external rotate er's. This tends to be an issue in a lot of people, especially people who spend a lot of time and internal rotation on a computer, so doing some form of external rotation is really good. The classic external rotation move is this one, like with an elastic band, but what I like is what's called a sock squad because you hit so many different muscles and addresses just about every imbalance that exists in a way that a sock squat work, squeeze your shoulder blades back. You get into this position just like this drop into a squad. Even one of these is really hard to dio at the bottom of the squad you press while keeping your shoulder way squeezed back, and then you stand in that position now try just one sometime when you get a chance just one sock squad, but if you do, like ten of those in a row, like once a day, you're going to address all your shoulder and black and balances hamstring and balances it turns on the v m o really great exercise to kind of have in your arsenal to dio so as faras gear for balance, we pretty much talked about most of it, you know, blue light blocking glasses, many trampoline stuff to balance on that type of thing, you know, I'm out of breath from that sock squat, okay, so the last thing that I want to focus on here is just, you know, the again the lens to rich you see the world and deciding what you want to focus on, so, you know, strength, do you get injured easily or you scrawny or small? Do you have trouble moving heavy stuff? You go back and you kind of geek out on some of the stuff that I just talked about when it comes to strength power? If you have trouble jumping higher, you can't throw very far. You can't swing very hard that's where you focus on power speed if you have to roll moving short distances faster, switching direction quickly or moving side to side that's where speed comes in handy arrange emotional mobility to pull muscles a lot do you have constant tightness to have an inability to reach body positions that you need to be be in to achieve what you want to achieve that's where mobility would come in balance do you have trouble seeing hearing responding reaction time falling down balancing on one leg that's where you'd focus on balance I personally just don't take my chances and try and work at least one workout that incorporates at least one of these strategies for strength, power, speed, mobility and balance throughout the entire week, and I'm able to keep my body really put together and achieve what I wanted to achieve by keeping all these together so that's the overview of strength, power, speed, mobility and balance. Now you guys know some of the stuff that you need to work on that might go over and above what you're currently doing let's take some questions we've got a comment very scott comes another way that you can help with those steps it is by leaning up against the wall, making sure that you're straight against the wall and going over okay, I like wall slides yep, yeah making sure that your your heels in touch with wall, your butts in touch with wall, your shoulder blades, the backs of your hands and then you just slide up and down and it burns like a mother after about like, ten reps but it's a really great way to strengthen is internal through those external rotator yeah, it is. It is it's like that sock squad it's a lot harder than it looks. So how about from the internet? Yeah, we have a question here from seal addict and they say to speed training, put wear and tear uncertain muscles if you're over, if you're between sixty and eighty years old, they mentioned watching a documentary called the numbers game that brought this up. Is there any advice for people who are in that age range yeah, use use the water like for anything that is explosive, powerful, that type of thing, the older you get, the more careful you need to be doing in a loaded position. So that's, why I really like water and water bests and water aerobics and water running and deep water training for stuff like that. So, yeah, we actually had a tw this recent triathlon camp I taught in thailand we did a full hour that was just like training on exercises you can do in deep water and it's amazing. Like we spent sixty minutes we could have kept going just like on all the different explosive swings and hops and moves and all the stuff you can do in deep water that zero impact no great, great and also, jude online asked teo for you to mention the blue blocking glasses that were a little low, less expect. Wait for the bio hacking. We'll talk about that way. I think, yes, we'll get we'll we'll get to that gun, are is just look for the brand gun. Are that's one that's popular among gamers. There are some others, but what we can dig into that more detail.