Menopause Monday : Equilibrium and Agility

Two things to include in your health/fitness routines are equilibrium and agility training. Both are very important as we age and move through menopause.

Most people interchange balance and equilibrium, but they're not actually the same thing.  Balance is the ability to stand with equal weight in each leg.

Equilibrium is the ability to shift your body weight through space, against gravity, without falling. Semantics! 😂

​Agility is your ability to move your feet quickly so you can catch yourself from falling when you lose your footing. 

You can probably see how these to skills go together so well. We need agility to be able to quickly catch our footing if we start to lose our equilibrium! Who hasn't stumbled over a crack in the pavement, or missed a step on a curb or staircase? There are those who easily catch their footing, course correct and continue on their merry way. And then there are those who fall. Sometimes so quickly they don't even know how it happened. 

As we age, we definitely need to do our strength work to help maintain our muscle mass, which in turn helps us maintain our bone density, and our equilibrium and agility, so we hopefully avoid falling. If we do fall, hopefully our bones don't break, such as a hip, wrist or shoulder. 

Test Your Equilibrium

So here's a test, if you so choose! 

• Set a timer for 30 seconds and see if you can balance on one foot. try it on both legs. 
• If it's easy to do, then try it with your eyes closed. Much harder! 
• If you need to lower your lifted foot, take note how many times you do so. Record that, then practice again every day.
• Practice this move regularly and track how you improve. 

Ok, now for some exercises to help with your equilibrium and agility. I think back to my Take It Outside Fitness classes, and we did these activities every class!

Equilibrium Exercises 

• hopscotch -- be sure to switch your single foot hops, If you can, practicing tipping forward to pick up your stone/bottle cap/etc, lifting the back leg high behind you. 
• airplane -- which is kinda like the hopscotch tip, but incorporates more intentinal hip rotation 
• trampoline/rebounding
• skip balancing -- you don't leave the ground for this move. Instead you move slower and balance on one straight leg as you bend the other knee upward. Like skipping, but not.  

• walking on a curb or a line on the basketball/tennis/pickleball court, heel to toe-- like a balance beam
• ​walk backwards -- as long as the area is clear
• walk backwards on your imaginary balance beam (see above)
• side stepping

• ​touch toe the clock numbers 
  • stand in center of imaginary clock face, facing 12 o'clock. 
  • Pick up your right foot, bend your left leg and reach right foot towards 12:00
  • then straighten left leg, pulling right knee up and balance, then repeat reaching to 1:00, and so on. 
  • You'll have to twist and bend a bit to reach across the clock to the 9:00.  
  • Repeat on the other leg.

Agility Exercises 

• grapevine
• hopping over a line or parking curb
• Simon says
• tire run
• ladder running patterns
• running the lines-- suicides 
• ski moguls
• football hustle -- try it forward, left, back, right forward and switch the direction
• side ladder shuffle -- there are tons of drills to do with ladders. You don't need to buy one, you can mark the ground with chalk, or just imagine the ladder on the ground. The ladder could be a tripping hazard, so best to just draw or imagine one!
• with a partner toss a ball, balloon or bean bag back and forth, switching the direction of the toss to keep your partner guessing

I've got a ton more options, but this should give you the general idea.
​You can incorporate a few of these drills into your routine 2-3 times per week, ideally after your warm up. I like to do them on my interval days.

Let me know in the comments how your equilibrium test went, and how you like the exercise drills. 
take good care,
Kristin