Balance Board – Has your hectic work routine been keeping you from focusing on your health?
Are you looking for ways to add a few exercises so you can burn off the extra calories while you enjoy a slice of cake, knowing that you’ve earned it?
Well, we’ve got just the perfect gym gear for you to burn off maximum calories without having to exercise for hours. Isn’t that a great deal?
Table of Contents
What Is a Balance Board?
Balance boards, also known as wobble boards, are around flat wooden boards with an unstable dome-shaped bottom. Even though there are various balance boards, the ones with a round shape are the best because they allow you to move all around.
Whether you’re recovering from a previous injury, trying to improve your balance, building a stronger core, or trying to enhance mind and muscle connection, the balance board is the perfect gear for it all and much more.
Benefits of Using a Balance Board
A balance board is an ideal gym gear for everyone, whether you’re a newbie to the gym, an athlete or a professional. Practicing balance training is the best thing that can happen to anyone.
Here are a few of the many benefits that a balance board offers:
Reduced Injuries
One of the significant reasons for injuries and falls is having poor functional strength and lack of your body’s awareness.
When we talk about functional strength, we refer to the energy you need to power through your everyday activities, which is enhanced by incorporating balance training. We’re sure you know the gym gear we will refer you to; Balance board.
According to research, adding balance training to high school athletes with prior history of ankle injuries reduced their ankle sprain incidents by half.
A balance board helps you add balance training to your regime and strengthen your legs, glutes, and core, which helps you build more muscle tissues and avoid any muscle fatigue to avoid any falls and injuries.
Increases Core Strength
The core is an important muscle group in your body and is substantially involved in your every move. Even with a simple move like getting up from your bed or grabbing the remote control from afar, your core gets involved unconsciously.
Similarly, exercises like a squat, pushup, and burpee also engage your core. Unfortunately, since these workouts are engaging your core muscles unconsciously, you do end up forgetting to focus on them and create a mind-muscle connection.
When exercising with a balance board, you need to keep all your attention on balancing your entire body on a mere surface that is highly unstable; therefore, you must concentrate on engaging your core or else you will experience a fall.
This focused core engagement allows you to balance your body, enhance your body awareness and create a mind-muscle connection, helping you increase your core strength.
Promotes Weight Loss
Weight loss is not easy to do; instead, it combines habits and lifestyle patterns.
Weight loss happens when you consistently eat in a calorie deficit and burn off the calories. Burning off these excess calories is profoundly dependent on several other factors, such as the exercise you do, its intensity level and your weight.
Research showed that when people performed their everyday jobs, such as typing on a keyboard while standing on a balance board, their heartbeats increased, leading to more significant energy expenditure, resulting in an increased number of calories burned, ultimately promoting weight loss.
Increased Body Awareness
Body awareness is when you move and engage your muscles consciously and identify the muscles used during workouts.
Having body awareness and understanding its movement means creating a mind and muscle connection. This connection lets you engage your targeted muscles properly during a workout instead of just moving the hands and exercising the subsidiary muscles.
When exercising using a balance board, you are consciously making an effort to control your movements and balance yourself on the board while engaging the targeted muscles, so you can cross over to the hypertrophy muscles stage instead of dreaming about it all day long.
Balance Board Workout
We’ve listed some excellent balance board workouts for you that will help you build up stability and enhance your functional strength in no time.
Push up
- Bend over and grab the balance board from its sides, placing hands right under your shoulder in a manner that there is a straight line from your shoulder to the floor
- Keep your legs fully extended at the back, keeping them an inch apart
- Lower down your chest to the ground until your elbows are at a 45-degree angle with your body
- Push back up and repeat the steps
Single Leg Bridge
- For this workout, lie down flat on the floor with your arms placed by your side and your knees bent
- Place your right foot on the center of the balance board and the left foot on the ground
- Raise your left leg in the air, keeping it perpendicular to the floor and your toes facing the sky
- Lift your leg while squeezing your glutes and keeping your spine straight
- Lower your back down to complete one rep
Squat
- Get into starting position by placing both feet on the balance board at shoulder-width apart
- Keeping your shoulders rolled back and downwards, lower into a squat while using your core and arms raised forward as stabilizers
- Slowly put pressure on your heels to return to the original position
Mountain Climbers
- Start in a plank position while holding the ends of the balance board with both hands
- Bring one knee towards your core while activating your abdominal muscles
- Extend the leg back to its original position and then repeat with the other leg
- Slowly increase the pace to get your heart pumping
Burpees
- Begin in a standing position while holding a balancing with both hands in front of your chest
- Fall into a pushup position with the balance board facing downwards and arms entirely straight.
- Perform a pushup and then push both feet towards your hands at the end
- Stand up straight in the starting position and do a quick jump before repeating the cycle again
Buying A Balance Board
A round surface balance board is the best to increase your balance and enhance your functional strength. A round surface allows you to rotate the board in all directions easily.
DMoose balance board for core strength is made up of high-quality wood, with a flat surface of 15.5 inches allowing you to stand comfortably. Moreover, the slip-resistant surface and 15-degree tilting angle make sure that you enjoy a safe yet effective workout.
Conclusion
Balance board training helps you enhance your functional strength to power through your everyday activities.
A balance board allows you to develop body awareness and focus on your core when exercising and thoroughly engage it during workouts. Using the board for workouts enables your body to utilize greater energy leading to greater calorie burn assisting you in your weight loss journey.
References
- McGuine, Timothy A., and James S. Keene. ‘The Effect of a Balance Training Program on the Risk of Ankle Sprains in High School Athletes’. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 34, no. 7, July 2006, pp. 1103–11. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546505284191.
- Nelson, Megan C., et al. ‘The Effectiveness of Standing on a Balance Board for Increasing Energy Expenditure’. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 50, no. 8, Aug. 2018, pp. 1710–17. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000001595.
- Rivera, Matthew J., et al. ‘Proprioceptive Training for the Prevention of Ankle Sprains: An Evidence-Based Review’. Journal of Athletic Training, vol. 52, no. 11, Nov. 2017, pp. 1065–67. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-52.11.16.
