How to build confidence in your balance in 5 strategies

Without having the confidence in your balance, you won’t feel confident in your activities of daily living like walking the dog, visiting friends or going to the supermarket. Instead, you will you more than likely spend more time at home, start depending heavily on a walking aid like a walking stick or 4 wheely walker or even start depending on family and friends to do these tasks for you.

If this is the direction you’re heading (but don’t want to be), you’re in the right place! Today I am sharing the 5 strategies you need to improve balance and have confidence on your feet. Just improving one of these things will assist you balance confidence. Working with all 5 means you will be a pro for your age. This information is based on my years of experience working as an Exercise Physiologist and 15yrs working specifically with people over the age of 65yrs who have these challenges just like you.  

We’ll cover everything from strength to reaction time. I’ll also give you some things to look out for along the way, tips to determine where and why you think you lack to confidence on your feet (it could be for lots of reasons).

Just follow the strategies, and by the time you've mastered the 5, you’ll feel like confident on your feet and ready to re-enter the world like a balancing pro and enjoy getting back to all the fun things you use to do and regain your independence.

Ready? Let’s go!

Strategy #1: Improve your Mobility 

Improving your mobility would be the first step required to improve your balance. Why? Because balance is required when we are doing our primary activity – which is walking. And to walk you need hip flexibility to pick up your feet as your walk.

Before you move to the other 4 strategies, you’ll want to take your time with this first step to ensure you have the mobility to walk.

So, the first thing you need to do work on your high knee marching.

• Start this movement seated. Sitting up tall, march on the spot (knees as high as possible)
• When you have built your confidence you can move to a standing based marching movement while holding on to a sturdy object (chair, kitchen bench). Don’t forget the high knees
• When you have confidence in this movement, move to a marching movement without holding on, and moving your arms opposite to your feet (again, don’t forget the high knees)

Making sure you can get your knees as high possible to help improve your mobility. The higher the knees the more mobility you will have in your hips, allowing you to pick you feet up as your walk. This exercise will also train your body to pick you feet up which will help to prevent tripping falls (pick up your feet as you walk.

What to look out for:

Many people skip this foundational step and then wonder why they’re not improving there balance with just balance movements. Don’t let that be you.

This is a crucial foundational step that will set you up for success later on. And each step is a building block for the next, so don’t try to jump ahead unless you have already mastered this movement.

All done? Great job! Let’s move on to Step 2.

Strategy #2: Increase your strength

At this point, you’re probably thinking that this is blog doesn’t make sense. Mobility for balance? Why?

You may even be wondering, “where is the actual balance exercises?”

If that's you, hang in there, it will make sense, I promise. What we’re doing is pulling this all together into a comprehensive group of exercises to improve your balance and confidence on your feet.

One thing that may help is to know that all these exercises with video’s will be added at the end of this blog, so you won’t have to scroll back through to pull out each one.

Now it’s time to talk about improving your strength. Improving your strength will also work to improve your balance and confidence on your feet.

The reason this step is important is that it will help you last longer on your feet and walk with confidence which in turn will make it easier to do your normal activities of daily living like grocery shopping or taking the bins out at night.

Plus, building your strength will help in other areas of your life, like getting out of a chair, walking stairs, decreasing pain and preventing frailty.

Here are some tips to help you build strength with one simple exercise – Sit To Stand.

• If you are really weak, start the sit to stand exercise from the chair on your 4 wheely walker. This should be higher than a regular chair making the exercise easier. It also has handles and breaks which you can use for safety measures.
• Pro Tip 1: Parking your wheely walker against a wall before starting this exercises will give you added safety
• Pro Tip 2: Do as many repetitions as you can before giving yourself a break. Once you feel that you have recovered, do another set of sit to stand, as many as you can do, before finishing the exercise
• Sit to stand exercise from a regular (sturdy) chair. Depending on your strength, you may still need to use your hands for this exercise. Make sure that you put most pressure on your legs not your arms in this instance.
• Pro Tip: putting you chair against a wall for extra safety measures.
• Pro Tip 2: do as many repetitions as you can before giving yourself a break. Once you feel that you have recovered, do another set of sit to stand, as many as you can do, before finishing the exercise
• Sit to stand exercises, no hands. Low chair. Moving through this exercise slowly. Moving slowly in this exercise will engage your muscles for longer and help to increase your strength faster.
• Pro Tip 1: Putting you chair against a wall for extra safety measures.
• Pro Tip 2: Do as many repetitions as you can before giving yourself a break. Once you feel that you have recovered, do another set of sit to stand, as many as you can do, before finishing the exercise
• Pro Tip 3: Move to the count of 3 counts down, 3 counts up. Make sure you control this movement.

What to look out for:

When I first started prescribing this movement, I didn’t encourage people to put the chair against the wall or put the breaks on the Wheely walker. But I have since learnt that this should be a must in completing this exercise.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work with hundreds of clients, and in the process, I’ve seen common mistakes people make that hold them back from improving strength and in turn balance and confidence on their feet

Many of them relate to this step:

• Not being consistent with the exercises. To increase strength you should be doing 30min of strength exercises 2-3 times per week. Doing strength exercises sporadically and inconsistently will not give the desired effect.
• Incorrect positioning of knees and ankles. While sitting on a regular chair, your ankles should be a 90 degrees, your knees at 90 degrees and your hips at 90 degrees. Decreasing this angle of your knees will put unwanted pressure on your knees and ankles and cause pain/injury. Having a knee angle more than 90 degrees will make it harder to achieve the exercise.
• Doing too much too soon. If your body is new to exercise, your enthusiasm might be sky rocketing. Just know that by going too hard and doing to much too early, may back fire. No one is motivated to exercise when they are sore. Slow baby steps and increase as your body allows

Just remember, small exercise actions are better than no actions at all. If you start slowly but consistently, you’ll be on the right track.

Step #3: Improve your balance

Are you starting to get excited? I hope so. We are finally going to talk about balance (which is why you’re here right?).  

You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed and that’s perfectly normal. Any time you’re trying something new, it takes time to process it. Just be patient and stay with it. 

Next, its time to improve your actual balance.

While you’re doing this, make sure you are practising safe practises.

If you have poor balance, undertaking balance exercises without a safety net can be quite dangerous and will increase your risk of falling.

Make any adjustments you need to make before you move on to this step.

For example:

1. Do balance exercises while holding onto a chair or your wheely walker
2. Do balance exercises in the corner of a kitchen bench (so you have something to hold onto with each hand and can be supported
3. There are some seated based exercise you can try first (look here- Instagram)

Before we go into balance exercises, you should know that there are different types of balance. Balance exercise can be categorised into

1. Static balance exercises (standing on one leg)
2. Dynamic balance exercises (clock stepping)
3. Reactive balance exercises (standing/seated quick stepping)
4. Postural control balance exercises (posture shifts and back to centre)
5. Dual tasking exercises (doing a physical task and a cognitive task activity at the same time)

What to look out for:

It may be hard to zero in on what type of balance exercise you require. Some people may have excellent static balance and terrible dynamic balance. Having confidence on your feet may require you undertake all types of balance exercises, making sure you cover all bases.

To help this you can opt to do a different type of balance exercise each day. Take note about which of these are easy and which are harder. This should identify what ty[e of balance you need help with and you can then move to focusing on this movement.

Strategy #4: Improve your coordination

Here’s what to do next:

Improve your coordination. Coordination is strongly related to good balance. Even walking (where the majority of falls will occur) is a complex movement pattern that requires a lot of coordination. Think about all the steps required in walking, - heel strike, foot plant, toe push, leg swing, toe clear. Alternating this on each leg while swinging the opposite arm to leg swing. COMPLICATED.

Coordination is the process of your brain talking to your muscles, and coordination can be lost as you age.

A simple coordination exercise to get you started would be a marching exercise where you touch your right knee with your left hand and your left knee with your right hand.

What to look out for:

No matter what you do, don’t start doing coordination exercises standing if you do not feel safe on your feet. If you do, you’ll only risk having a fall and losing the confidence on your feet, setting yourself back. Coordination movements can be started while seated. (The above example of marching while tapping you hand on the opposite knee can be done seated).  

Keep going! You’re nearly there.

Strategy #5: Improve your dual tasking

This is the last step. Get ready to celebrate!

Although dual tasking is not a specific balance exercise, it is very important to master for good balance and confidence on your feet.

What is dual tasking: Dual tasking is the ability to do a physical task and a cognitive task at the same time. Something as simple as walking and talking at the same time. If you have poor dual tasking, you may find yourself having a fall doing something simple as grocery shopping while thinking about what is for dinner.  

The dual tasking exercise to try would be walking while saying the alphabet backwards

• Start by doing this exercise standing marching and holding on (while saying the alphabet backwards)
• If letters are not your thing, try counting backwards from 100 in groups of 7.
• Any cognitive task while moving is going to work

What to look out for:

The first time I prescribed this exercise to a client, I noticed that they would stop moving while they were solving the cognitive task. Or stop the cognitive task while walking. This was a sign that this client had poor dual tasking (and was at a risk of falling).

For this reason, we started the exercise while seated to keep it safe. The exercise turned into a seated marching movement while doing a cognitive task (alphabet backwards). As mentioned above, if letters are not your thing, you may think that you have poor dual tasking. If this is the case, try another cognitive task. If you are able to keep moving while doing the new task, your dual tasking is probably ok.

I had a client who was terrible with letters, but we changed the cognitive task to naming countries of Europe and they nailed it!

The biggest lesson for me in all that was that everyone has a different cognitive strengths, and you should be working with the the client not against them.

It just shows you there’s more than one way to achieve a desired outcome. So more than anything else, do what works for you.

And finally, here’s a Bonus Tip just for you! 

Bonus! If you want to walk with confidence, practice walking with confidence.

This is something I started doing after realising that so many of my clients would do the balance exercises, but still were not walking with confidence.

So we started…..walking with confidence. What does walking with confidence look like.

Stand tall. Look forward. Pick up your feet. Comfortable long strides. Arm swing.

We started doing this safely (with someone walking beside them), or within the home, walking down a hallway, along a long wall or kitchen bench. So that if you the client did feel unsafe, they had the wall to hold on to.

You can even practice walking with confidence with a 4wheely walker. The same rules apply, just holding on to the walker.

Stand tall, look forward, pick up feet, confident long strides.

Key Takeaways

Congratulations! You just learned how to build confidence in your balance with 5 steps. Follow the exercises provided above and create a 20-minute workout that targets all the different types of balance. Make sure your mobility is good, you work on your strength, coordination and finally balance.

I’ve given you all my best tips, tools, and techniques to help you work towards your goal of improving your balance and having confidence on your feet. Just knowing them isn’t enough, though. It’s time to act and get the results you’ve been dreaming about! 

If you are interested in learning more about falls and balance, please join us for our Get Up! Stand Up virtual falls program.