Adding Effective Balance Skills to Your Physical Fitness Training and Fighting Capabilities – Part 1: Introduction

Introduction to Balance Training I: Why Do Balance Physical Training?

Greetings, Partisans!! I hope everyone’s been doing well and training hard… things are getting weirder and weirder out there, and proving Alex Jones more correct by the day! Despite everything though, we Partisans continue to look to ourselves and train on while other typical “conservatives” waste valuable time by anxiously awaiting the return of Trump or some other magical figure to rescue them. Ok… let me just stop there LOL.

For the next few posts, I’d like to touch upon a very important, yet frequently overlooked aspect of physical fitness – balance training! That’s right… very few people out there work their balance chops in an organized, dedicated, or structured way, thus leaving this underappreciated yet valuable physical capability under- or even completely unattended to. And that’s a damn shame, because it shouldn’t take the fighting Partisan much imagination to envision how being light on one’s feet has many immediate applications to truly ANY kind of fight or dynamic movement situation.

After all, what is a fight – whether running and gunning in the woods (or wherever) while under load, engaging in CQB, or being locked in unarmed hand-to-hand combat… if not chaotic, dynamic, and multi-directional? Beyond the obvious strength, technical skill, and endurance demands of any fight, the Partisan must also consider the nimbleness required in order to dominate and win. Since a fight is always fluid, the Partisan must train in specialized form in order to maximize his combined mobility and agility while on his feet. Balance skills for a fight or dynamic situation touch not just on actual physical combat, but also on the actions, events, and needs that surround the combat situation – dynamic movements on uneven surfaces while under load; landing on or getting back to your feet after losing your footing; remaining light on your feet while moving quietly under load, just to name a few scenarios. Clearly, stealth and fall prevention – the opposites of heavy-footed and clumsy movements – also depend on good balance! The success of your mission can very much hinge upon effectively moving stealthily and undiscovered towards an objective, or simply on not falling and busting your skull open while moving over rough terrain quickly and under load, or both… or whatever other rigorous conditions demanding good balance! You all get the picture, I’m sure.

Finally, balance training adds some realistic and fun variety to the Partisan’s overall exercise program. Taking a plain vanilla exercise and effectively imposing conditions of instability on it (as I’ll describe in detail below) makes for a rich, multi-demand exercise experience that is both challenging and stimulating. While it’s vital to put in the bulk of the time with traditional exercise in basic form, adding balance training makes a workout program more interesting and exciting, on top of making the workout more specifically productive for our Partisan needs.

And so this is where dedicated balance skill-building work comes into play; the smart-training Partisan will be sure to include balance work in their PT program in order to be a more well-rounded and capable fighter. The purpose of the next several posts, then, is to introduce Partisans to concepts and examples of balance work that they can easily and immediately incorporate into their workouts, even with no specialized equipment. At the same time, there are also some very nice pieces of equipment out there specially designed for balance training that are worth buying and that I will cover in this balance skill “mini-series” as well.

Ok! Let’s get right into things!

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Introduction to Balance Training II: A Working Conceptual Definition of Balance Physical Training

So we just covered the “why” of balance physical training (“balance PT”). Now, we get to the “what” and “how”.

First, it’s good to understand that balance abilities will automatically improve a good deal just by introducing serious exercise into your lifestyle. Good balance is, in great part, a byproduct/side effect of general strength. That is, strong muscles that can perform work will automatically provide a basic sense of balance vs. the deconditioned person. The loss of muscle tone that comes with aging occurs very quickly for deconditioned people, and is the reason why so many seniors have such poor balance: many have allowed themselves to wither away physically, and with that voluntary loss of muscle mass/tone comes a loss of basic balance ability. That’s why my senior personal training clients, all of whom are keen on training balance skills, can improve their balance immediately even without specialized work – because their neglected muscles are doing real work for maybe the first time ever, and that brings automatic improvements in balance. Adding balance training to the basic exercise regimen then opens fitness doors for them that they never thought possible, often vastly increasing their basic quality of life!

Just as important, core strength is vital to good balance skills. Without getting into too much detail right now, we’ll just say that doing quality core work via abdominal exercises, lower back work, and trunk-twisting movements is of fundamental importance to balance ability, and is a necessary starting point to developing balance skills.

Now, for the purposes of our current discussion on balance PT for improved fighting and dynamic movement, let’s make the training concept nice and simple (and that’s the ONLY kind of information you’ll ever get from me): balance physical training describes any exercise that is: deliberately done on an unstable surface and/or done with a reduced base of support and/or done with an asymmetrical positioning or asymmetrical loading pattern. Often (but not always), effective balance PT will combine two or more of these imposed conditions.

So, as a very crude (but certainly viable) example, imagine doing a set of Barbell Curls while standing on a soft mattress: the exercise (Barbell Curls for the biceps) is being performed on an unstable surface (the soft, squishy mattress), which would obviously make performance of the exercise significantly harder, since you’d likely flop around quite a bit more when you try to move under load in a composed fashion. Just standing on the mattress alone (unstable surface), even with symmetrically-positioned footing would add significant balance challenge. To further enhance the balance challenge, you could even join your feet together at the ankles (unstable surface + reduced base of support vs. typical hip-width foot placement) or even stand with your feet in a heel-to-toe arrangement (unstable surface + reduced base of support + asymmetrical positioning), and then see how much harder it is to perform those same Barbell Curls. In fact, you might not even be able to get a single repetition performed of a weight that, under stable conditions, is totally doable!

Staying with our example above of performing Barbell Curls on the soft mattress, let’s consider directions of movement too. As you move that barbell up and down as stably as possible, the barbell’s leverage changes as the elbow goes through the roughly 160 degrees of its full movement range. So with the exercise’s prescribed up and down movement, we’ll consider the different rates of movement in each arm (one arm being somewhat weaker than the dominant arm for most people), which then adds a lateral inequality (i.e., instability) to the mix on an already squishy mattress (unstable surface). Finally, if you end up using a hip thrust to “cheat” on your curl (which pretty much everyone does, sooner or later), the back-and-forth movement created by the hip thrust to inefficiently help move the bar upwards may cause you stumble forwards or backwards, since the hip thrust is forward in its direction while the curl is more of an up-down motion.

Again, the example of the Barbell Curls on the soft mattress is crude, but it should readily illustrate for readers the three-dimensional/all-directional nature of balance work. It’s vital to understand that the path of most exercises occur in pretty much a straight line or in a semi-circle. For straight lines, think about your Push-Ups, Overhead Presses, Squats, Chin-Ups, and pretty much any basic, compound movement (movements using multiple joints). For semi-circles, think about your Barbell Curls, Romanian Deadlifts, and pretty much all other isolation movements, which are really just rotary movements about a single joint. Whether straight line or semi-circle, there is basically only one direction or path of movement for most exercises, which are then almost always done on stable surfaces and with a deliberately firm base of support. However, when you introduce an unstable surface, an asymmetrical loading or positioning, and/or reduced support base… suddenly, all THREE dimensions of movement – up/down; left/right; back/forth – require stabilization in order to maintain the proper and desired straight or circular path of the exercise movement.

Therefore, another critical aspect of balance PT that Partisans must understand for effective fight-boosting exercise programming is that balance PT is almost entirely focused on development of what we’ll call the Core-Hip-Ankle Balance Complex (“CHABC”; this is my own term). That is, the parts of the body that are most heavily engaged in balance action are: the core (abs in front, lower back in the rear, and obliques on the sides); the hips; and the ankles. In fact, you’ll probably never feel more of a burn in your ankle-spanning muscles than when you do balance PT, and you feel these little muscles suddenly come alive for you! The three body parts of the CHABC are truly involved in EVERY single real-world balance engagement of the body, especially as it applies to fighting and dynamic movement, much of which occurs on one’s feet (grappling and crawling are an entirely different “creature” that require their own particular training considerations).

And what is it that all three components of the CHABC have in common? These parts of the body can each move in multiple directions, as detailed below:

  • Up/Down – hips; ankles; core (either with or without hip involvement)
  • Left/Right – hips; ankles (via tilting); core (via spinal tilting)
  • Back/Forth – hips; core
  • Conical Rotation – hips; ankles, core

Just look at all the movement possible by the CHABC – all the potential movement which has to be STABILIZED so that the desired straight-line or semi-circular arcing movement can occur effectively and powerfully! In fact, we can firmly say that stability is fundamental to strong movement, and this is an inviolable rule of all physical training. Instability leads to weak and sloppy movement, while stability is the basis for strong and firm movement. Therefore, when properly training balance, you’re pretty much simultaneously training the dozens of small, mostly unknown, and highly-underutilized muscles of the CHABC to work efficiently in concert in all three dimensions of movement, all at the same time, thus providing your movement with a firm base from which to occur. The better your mental connection to the CHABC musculature via dedicated training, the better your balance will be, and the better your balance is, the stronger you will be when moving. Put another way, the better your balance is, the better your fighting game will be… pretty basic.

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That’s all for now! I hope Partisan readers’ mental training gears are grinding and thinking about how they might blend some quality balance work into their exercise regimens. My next posts will cover balance PT without specialized equipment, as well as worthwhile specialized balance training equipment to consider buying as well as  how to use it; I’ll also get into more specific exercise suggestions and examples. I look forward to readers’ questions and comments. Thanks for reading!

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Balance PT Series

Adding Effective Balance Skills to Your Physical Fitness Training and Fighting Capabilities – Part 1: Introduction

Adding Effective Balance Skills to Your Physical Fitness Training and Fighting Capabilities – Part 2: Balance PT Without Specialized Equipment

Adding Effective Balance Skills to Your Physical Fitness Training and Fighting Capabilities – Part 3: With Specialized Equipment

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About the Author: conan

Conan has been working out for over 25 years, with extensive experience in lifting weights; he has also been a personal fitness trainer for 22 years now. He has experience both doing and training people in various modes of fitness and exercise throughout those decades. He enjoys hunting, martial arts, shooting, and studying history and world cultures. He seeks to share his extensive knowledge of physical fitness, as well as his recent experiences in taking tactical training courses and transmitting acquired tactical skills to the people in his AO. Contact Conan at: [email protected].​

12 Comments

  1. Parachutin Frogman February 19, 2022 at 18:52

    Appreciated your write-up, Conan.

    • conan February 19, 2022 at 19:14

      Hi Parachutin Frogman! Glad to have you read the post. More good training info coming up very soon!

  2. Chef February 20, 2022 at 08:17

    Great post. I’m adding this to my workouts. It is so true what you say about losing muscle as we age. I’m having problems with the veins in my legs from working such long hours standing over the years. The only things that delay the progression are muscle to pump the blood back up, and oxygen. Long aerobic exercise seems to actually make them worse, so I have been using HIIT and adding the stability component just seems to be a great idea. Thank you.

    • conan February 20, 2022 at 10:05

      Greetings, Chef! Balance PT will definitely get some good blood flow to your lower extremities in a specific way, and should help mitigate your circulatory/vein issues. In general, I think long periods of aerobic exercise do much more harm than good – it makes you lose muscle mass, among other evils. I also don’t think long aerobic workouts are very real-life or applicable to our Partisan fitness needs, in my humble opinion. HIIT is definitely the way to go when it comes to approaching cardiovascular fitness. It’s much better for conditioning purposes, much more realistic, and it also takes far less time… I detest extended cardio, especially on a machine. Glad you found the post useful and relevant! More suggestions and ideas to come in the next few days, so please stay tuned. Thanks for reading and commenting!

  3. vagabond February 20, 2022 at 13:41

    This it is getting boring, meaning yet ANOTHER home run! Great stuff. What is actually happening in balance training and especially under a controlled load is a super demand on the nervous system both in the brain and in the spine. The practical benefits are obvious, but the long-term goes to prevention of actual decay and old-age rot beyond being able to stay on your feet and prevent breakages. And the bit on rotation has been overlooked in gym work forever except among some crossfitters etc.

  4. vagabond February 20, 2022 at 13:43

    To clarify the ‘boring’ part, it’s kind of like watching Tyson back in the day, you KNOW there will be a knockout, so it takes away the suspense!

    • conan February 20, 2022 at 13:55

      Greetings, Vagabond! Always an honor and privilege to have you ready my posts and receive the praise, even if my stuff is “boring” LOL! I’m also glad you mentioned the part about the demand of balance PT on the nervous system. Training the nervous system, as you allude to, is extremely important to get the most out of an exercise program. The nervous system gets deeply involved when the training demands are very high, and that’s exactly the type of training Partisans need to be getting into, balance work being one aspect of nervous system training. And yeah, like I said, my senior personal training clients IMMEDIATELY recognize the immense benefits of balance training, and I’ve seen many cases in which seniors’ lives get truly transformed for the better by balance PT, even if they are late in getting into it. Thanks so much for reading and commenting, bro! More to come soon.

  5. James Carpenter aka "Felix" February 20, 2022 at 21:01

    Advancing in age, I continue to ride horses and rely in large part on their unique characteristics to keep my nervous system aware, centered, balanced. One screw up on hot steeds and the feedback loop is immediate and emphatic!.
    Throw a punch or swing an axe when you aren’t “centered”, well “balanced” and results will be likely be “disappointing”.
    One can always hope the next adversary is drunk and/or never rode a horse. :-)

  6. Patrick February 21, 2022 at 06:15

    I’m not a workout guru in ANY sense. But I’ve employed balance training whether I liked it or not, since losing my leg below the knee 20 years ago.
    It’s a must for me in order to function safely, and keep those around me safe at work.
    I tend to use narrow footing (stairs, a 2X4 etc) with bending and reaching… but without any weights… Hell… it can be done anywhere in a few minutes, a couple times a day, even at work.
    I recall Pat Mac has some vids of balance training in his (insane) routine… Interesting stuff!

    • conan February 21, 2022 at 08:45

      Hi Patrick! That’s an interesting situation to be in – you have no choice but to achieve some balance mastery in your case. You’re right – no equipment at all is needed in order to achieve a serious balance workout. I’ll be getting into balance work with no equipment, as well as balance PT using crude equipment like 2×4’s, etc. in my very next post, so glad you mentioned that too. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading and posting!

  7. Dan February 21, 2022 at 09:53

    Thanks! Great stuff.

    • conan February 21, 2022 at 10:43

      Thanks, bro! Stay tuned – more usable info coming up in the next few days!

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