Name: Chapter 17 - Balance Training Concepts | NASM CPT
Uploaded: 2025-07-02T06:01:26.000Z
Duration: 23 min 10 s
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Chapter 17 of the NASM CPT training certification, essentials of personal fitness training manual review.

This here is going to be relating to the next progression after core training concepts, which is balance training concepts.

So this is the next sequence in trying to develop your exercise programming.

So we're going to go through all of the main objectives here for why balance training, what's good for, and then at the end, we'll go through some of the exercises that you can use for this that are related to the book that are typically found in the appendix and everything like that.

There's your learning objectives down there to the left.

So let's just keep on moving through here.

The best thing about balance is that we have to think about two terms here, center of gravity and base of support.

So basically, it's understanding that if you keep your center of gravity within the base of support, you are more likely to be able to stay upright, balanced.

But the minute that you just say you want to walk, the minute that you put your belly button in front of your base of support, that means you'll have to take a step forward because you're testing those limits of stability, as it says right there.

Walking really is a coordinated, unbalanced motion constantly because we're always dynamic in that nature.

So we can classify balance into static balance, which is basically maintaining that base of support in a stationary position.

Semi-dynamic, where we can basically, without ambulatory motion, so moving around like stepping, we can move within that base of support, just not changing the base of support.

And then dynamic balance is truly being balanced while in the act of moving.

So your base of support is always being manipulated.

Like if you take a lunge in a sequence of walking lunges, you're dynamically trying to balance by keeping the hips squared, shoulders squared, head up, chest up, all of those cues.

And then what you're gonna do is step out a little bit more than tight roping, and then you basically have a base of support in that manner, drop the hips down, tap the knee and stand back up, all right?

And that's how we would work with dynamic balance to try to keep us from falling over side to side.

There's three really important systems that we really wanna fall within.

Vision system, the vestibular system, and then the somatosensory system, all right?

When we're looking at each one of these, it is really important to understand that although they work individually, there are times where you're gonna have to use them at one time.

So it's gonna help with proper muscle contraction, it's gonna keep you under that center of mass without really limiting your stability.

So there's a lot of factors that come into play with that.

So what we end up thinking about here is that if we don't have proper balance, we're really saying that if you have something like injury or if you have what we call a sensory motor function or dysfunction, that's gonna change that balance.

And then from there, balance training itself will help to enhance that person back into shape in terms of that injury that was there, trying to correct that.

And then trying to take that dysfunction out of the sensory motor functioning and put it back into play.

Okay, so how vision, you know, vision is truly eyes.

So if you have someone stand on one leg, and that really is a good example to the upper right there, if you have that individual that's standing up on their right leg, they can stand like that for a little while if their balance is okay.

But the minute that you take the vision out of it, all right, that changes that ability to be able to balance coordinatedly.

And that's where we can practice that and work with that so that we can get better with our eyes closed.

So, you know, if our vision is a little bit off, or it's that, you know, a moment where you had to have your eyes closed or whatever it be, you can still balance.

Now, light versus dark environment, that's also another challenge, all right, because you're losing that line of sight.

Now, vestibular, on the other hand, that's typically that inner ear functioning.

So if you turn your head side to side, you know, if you're looking ahead while rotating your trunk left to right, you know, all of those things can kind of scramble up that vestibular system.

So the more balanced training we have, the more we put ourselves into these different formats, the better we can enhance that.

And then same thing with the somatosensory is that that's basically saying we're changing the surface and basically the feelings of the skin to, you know, the skin pressures, the muscle length pressures, the joint angle tensions, all of those things make a big difference.

So if we take visual, vestibular, and somatosensory and we put them together, that truly will, you know, form that balance marking, okay?

If one is a little bit more aggressive than the other, that manipulates how much balance you have.

If they're all lacking, then it, you know, and they're all kind of their own separate entity, then that can really affect what your balance is like.

Well, you know, it does improve motor functioning for muscles, okay?

Really important for those, especially for those people who had preexisting injuries, especially things like knees or ankles, all right?

It's also the ability to maintain that center of mass where it needs to be.

So if you're, you know, if you're the person who is engaging in this training, then you are able to maintain that base of, within that base of support, that center of mass.

You're, you know, even if you had a preexisting injury or you have a current injury, the more balance training we provide you, it's not going to hurt you.

It's only going to help you to recover, number one, but also even if you are hurt, it will help you to be able to maintain, okay?

And then lastly, if we're adding that into, if we're adding balance training into like our resistance training protocols, understand that, you know, the more balanced we are, the more potential we have to increase strength, okay?

Also understand on the bottom there, you know, you know, there's an improvement of balance after an injury.

Balance has a direct carry over to being more agile or having more agility, okay?

That's also another one outside of the things that we had just talked about.

So, you know, with injury prevention, yeah, we're basically saying here that, you know, athletes who, you know, are programmed a balanced training style program that does help their resistance to injury.

It's making them, you know, more centered.

It's keeping everything in alignment in terms of under conditions of strain, all right?

And so because of that, you know, we can incorporate balance into a lot of different things.

Balance is necessary just along the side of stretching and, you know, whether it be strength-based things, plyometric-based things, with balance is all part of that injury prevention program.

And we want to make sure we don't want to miss it because if it enhances, why would we leave it out, okay?

So like, if you're doing any sort of plyometric-based training, like jump training, and you're working on landing mechanics, then understand that we are really taking into account that ability to diminish that chance of lower extremity injuries if we have proper balance and it can improve our landing mechanics, takes away all that chance.

Well, then those landing mechanics, and that also goes into other, you know, change of directions, things like that, that can help diminish ACL injuries, okay?

And it can actually be very important for fall prevention in terms of older individuals.

So very important for that injury prevention component.

With rehab, you know, balance, you know, with that ability to balance, if there's deficits, then that's going to extend that injury time, you know?

So we want to be able to use that balance training to be able to, you know, basically diminish those deficits and diminish the amount of time you're going to spend injured to come back sooner, whether it be to athletics or to just regular living, all right?

Again, risk of falls, and then if you had a fall, that could also affect it as well.

And then, like it says here, there's a term that is really, really cool, using perturbation, perturbation, if you look at the fourth bullet point there.

Perturbation is basically, you know, that's a style of balance training where what you're going to do is you're going to provide a stimulus, you're going to, you know, it might be where you're using your hand to gently touch a person and provide that instability to them, that imbalanced nature, and what the person has to do, and you're not talking about pushing really hard, but you're just pushing enough that on a balanced and unstable surface, that person is able to maintain that balance without falling off.

So if you had them on like a balance board or a wobble board, or you had them on a foam disc, or even a BOSU ball, you know, as they start getting more advanced, all of those things come into play.

So, you know, you're using like a touching sensation to move them and to disrupt their balance and then try to have them regain it in a certain situation, okay?

So, you know, with proper training, okay, we're talking about challenging the threshold of a person's limit of stability.

So we're basically going to challenge that center of gravity within that base of support, and we're going to challenge how well they can maintain it, okay?

We want to have what we call a proprioceptively enriched environment.

We want to give them specifics like unstable surfaces.

We want to give them different, you know, equipment that will challenge that functioning, all right?

But we also want to maintain proper technique.

We want to give different speed levels, all these things because we want max sensory input to then allow the central nervous system to become more improved, basically, at that point.

And when it becomes more improved, it just fills in that void of, you know, somebody that's going to be more prone to maybe topple over, or they're just going to be able to gain more strength if that's what they're looking for.

So all of those things come into play, okay?

So balance training is one of those ways that, you know, we can kind of say, okay, you don't need to just do strength training.

Balance training can become really important for functional movement patterns, and it's really important for them to be challenged in that way because it will only improve, you know, it will improve strength at that point.

So guideline-wise, you know, when we're going through everything, we want to think safe.

We want to think of that progression from easy to hard, but follow those tasks, simple to complex, stable to unstable, static to dynamic, slow to fast, eyes open to eyes closed, known to unknown, and then single tasks to dual tasks.

Those are, you know, you're going to go from easy to moderate to hard.

You know, you're going to follow along those patterns.

All right, so going from one extreme to another, but you're going to take your time moving through those and move through so that the client can adapt to whatever it is that you're trying to have them adapt to.

Now, balance equipment-wise, the proper progression there is floor to a balance beam, to a, like, basically if you take a foam roller that you'd use self myofascial release on, cut it in half, that would be your half foam roller, a foam pad, okay?

Foam pads come in different shapes and sizes.

Balance discs come in many different formats, and then wobble boards, right?

All of those are there for you, all right?

Planes of motion going from stagitals to the transverse, to, you know, to frontal, to transverse.

And then for our lower body, we want to think about two leg stable, okay?

So wide stance to a narrow stance into a tandem stance, single leg stable, then move to a two leg unstable, and then finish it off with single leg unstable.

And that's your proper progression for that as well.

And then lastly, that perturbation we talked about, mild to moderate, okay?

We want to go from a gentle, you know, directional push to gentle pushes in multiple directions.