Stability is a cornerstone of physical fitness that often goes overlooked, yet it plays a crucial role in everything from daily activities to advanced athletic performance. In this blog post, we'll explore how yoga, with its unique blend of strength and balance work, can be your go-to practice for improving stability. Whether you're looking to enhance your posture, prevent injuries, or simply find better balance in your life, yoga offers a holistic approach to strengthening the key stabilizing muscles in your body. Let's dive into how you can use yoga to build a more stable, balanced, and resilient self.
Stability training is any form of exercise that can help improve your balance. It’s a vital, and often overlooked aspect of wellbeing training. It’s important because it will improve your posture and your body awareness. It will also improve your ability to balance – and so avoid falling, which means it’s a great injury preventer.
There are all kinds of training you can do to improve stability. Pilates is great as it conditions the core, weight training works wonders too as it strengthens the legs but of all the fitness disciplines Yoga is the one that lends itself best to stability training as it challenges and improves your balance with so many of its postures.
The key stabilising muscles in the body are in the back, abdominals and lower legs these all help you stay upright and balanced when you’re standing. But of course when you’re in positions that require you to balance in other ways – as you do in a headstand or handstand - additional muscles take on the role of stabilisation.
How to start stability training
Aspects of stability training fall neatly into two categories – those exercises and postures that strengthen the muscles in order to help you stabilise and those exercises and postures that work those muscles because they challenge your balance.
Here’s an example. A standard high plank is a posture often used in Yoga. However it’s a symmetrical pose and as such it does not really challenge your balance. But assuming and holding the posture for a long time on a regular basis will build strength in you core muscles and your shoulders too. A high side plank is also a yoga posture that features in a number of classes. In this posture your legs and feet are stacked meaning only one foot and one hand are on the floor. As such it’s a far less stable pose so it will challenge your balance. If you’ve built the stabilising muscles using a traditional high plank you have a much better chance of balancing in a side plank. So, to build your stability and achieve your best balance it’s good practise to incorporate both types of posture in your practise.
Other pairs of postures that work in similar ways include mountain pose to strengthen and tree pose to challenge, chair pose to strengthen and eagle pose to balance, and three-legged down dog to strengthen and dancer’s pose to balance.
What is the difference between stability and balance?
Although linked stability and balance are not one and the same. Balance also requires good posture. Good posture delivers good weight distribution and that in turn ensures the shapes you make when balancing are easier to hold. The eyes and ears also play a part in your ability to balance. Fixing your gaze on one point in space is a simple and effective tool for better balance as is holding an ear lobe – where the posture allows – enabling you to better utilise the fluids in the ears that assist balance.
Using yoga for stability
If you want to use Yoga to train for stability a great place to start is with simple standing postures. Tree is a fantastic option because the height of the lifted foot can be adjusted to suit your stability and ability to balance (the lower the foot the easier it is). Try a low tree first resting the arch of the foot on the ankle bone. Engage your core muscles by placing the hands in prayer at the heart centre and pushing the hands inwards. Hold for at least 3 breaths. Circle the ankle of the landed leg once done and repeat on the other side. Repeat and progress to a higher foot position, a longer hold, elevated and extended arms, and an upward gaze over time. And once that’s done start over but try to keep your eyes shut at each level for a 3-breath hold – you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.
It your stability or balance aren’t great it will take time to train yourself to improve so be patient and remember even if when your stability is improving there may be days when your balance is off particularly if you have ear issues, a joint weakness or something as simple as a common cold. Ultimately it’s all about balance and that includes your attitude to training! Namaste.
