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More ways to challenge your balance

Reduce the support from your hands

Decreasing the amount of support that you rely on from your hands will challenge your balance. You can decrease your hand support gradually in the following way:

• Hold on with two hands.
• Hold on with one hand.
• Use intermittent support – use support on and off or for part of the time.
• Do not use any hand support.

You need to let go and keep up the flow.

Combine balance principles

You may be able to combine one or more of the balance principles to challenge your balance. For example, when you are able to shift your weight from foot to foot easily with your feet wide apart, you can make it more difficult by bringing your feet closer together and so reducing your base of support.

Advanced activities to further challenge your balance

When you are able to do the above activities with no support and remain balanced you can further challenge your balance by:

• Closing your eyes.

Closing your eyes makes it harder to balance because we rely on sight to balance.

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• Doing something else at the same time.

For example, talking to someone else, holding or carrying something, or anything that means your brain is trying to do more than one thing at the same time.

• Doing a mentally demanding activity.

For example, counting backwards by fours from 100. This makes it harder to balance because our brain finds it difficult to work on two things at the same time.43

Examples of ways to increase the challenge to your balance

Example 1

Tandem stand and shifting weight forwards and backwards: reducing base of support and shifting weight forwards and backwards

Instructions

• Put the heel of one foot directly in front of the toe of the other.
• Shift your weight from the back foot to the front foot and back again.
• Keep shifting your weight from foot to foot.
• Swap the foot that is in the front.
• Use support as needed.

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Example 2

Leaning side to side while doing another activity: shifting weight and moving to the limits of stability and doing something else at the same time

Example 3

Tandem walk with eyes closed: reduced base of support with eyes closed