Pillar #3 - Balance

Author: Jeff Wood

April 26, 2010

Balance is one of the most overlooked factors to athletic success.  There are a couple forms of balance that you should know about and understand:

1) Static Balance - the ability to balance in a stationary position (without movement) like standing on one leg for example.  Do you realize most sports are spent on either one leg or the other at any given time during a competition?  Static balance is hugely important.

2) Dynamic Balance - is the ability to balance while moving, so things like running, skating, shuffling, etc.  Here is a great example of balance: last weekend when the Pittsburgh Penguins were playing the Ottawa Senators, Sidney Crosby was carrying the puck behind the Ottawa net with Jason Spezza covering him like a blanket.  Crosby protected the puck, kept his balance while moving from side to side around the net (on one leg and both legs), came around the net one last time, got tripped up but kept control of the puck and made a pass to the point where a shot went in the net to help seal the victory for the Penguins.  He kept his balance while being pushed around and made a great play from his knees to set up the goal.  This is also an example of the other 3 pillars for the Ultimate Athlete - strength, coordination and stamina.

Training to improve balance is a very important aspect to athletic success.  Here are some great exercises to help an athlete have rock solid balance.

1) Single Leg Squats - Stand on one leg, gripping the floor with your foot to activate the muscles on the bottom of your feet.  Slowly bend at the hip, knee and ankle until your knee is bent between 90 degrees and your thigh being parallel to the floor.  Hold for 1 second and then return to a straight leg position.  Repeat for 3 sets of 8 repetitions.

2) Balance Board Squat Holds - A balance board is easy to make from scrap wood around the house.  You will need a 1’X2‘ piece of plywood, a 2”X2”X1‘ for your base and either glue or nails/screws to connect the two.  Make sure the 2X2 is centred on the bottom of the plywood.  There you have it.   Now in terms of the exercise, stand with your feet equal distance from the centre of the board, toes pointing straight ahead, feet gripping the board.  Make sure your chest is tall and your core is activated bend at the hip, knee and ankle until your knees are bent between 90 degrees and parallel with the floor and try to hold that for 15-30 seconds.  Repeat 3-4X.

3) Single Leg Stance with Resistance - OK this is a great one, but you will need a partner to perform it.  Stand on one leg with your hip, knee and ankle bent slightly, again gripping the floor with your foot.  Now have your partner gently push your upper body from side to side and front and back while you try and maintain your balance holding a strong athletic stance with an active core.  Perform for 3 sets of 30 seconds per leg.

You now have the starts of a balance program that will no doubt improve not only your static balance and strength but dynamic balance as well.

I hope that you are starting to see that the foundation (PILLARS) are so important to athletic success that without having these first, the high performance training components done later will never help an athlete reach the top of their sport because there will be too much relearning to do to make any significant progress.  As you will read below, it takes thousands of hours to become an expert, therefore thousands of quality repetitions, but if athletes are trying to jump ahead to the speed/power qualities too early without the solid foundation, it could actually take thousands more repetitions to correct faulty performance on top of the 10,000 hours to become an expert.  Who has that amount of extra time to give on relearning???

If you haven’t already read the book the Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I highly recommend it.  It shows some pretty interesting statistics about people related to when they were born during the calendar year, how many hours of training is required to be considered an expert in any endeavor.  The number he comes up with is 10,000 hours of training to become an expert.  That is a lot of hours.  Just to paint a picture for you that is 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for 13 years.  Any wonder why many elite athletes don’t really come onto the scene until they are well into their 20’s.

I will leave you with this quote by famous UCLA college basketball coach John Wooden “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over.”

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