Have you ever wondered if our muscles, bones, and posture can affect our balance? What do muscle strength, flexibility, and posture have to do with balance?
In our last post, we discussed what balance is and what four components contribute to our balance. If you missed this post, you can read about it by clicking here. The first component of balance that we mentioned briefly is the musculoskeletal system.
The musculoskeletal system is just that – a system of muscles and skeletal bone that help us maintain the frame and posture of our body. The musculoskeletal system includes all of our muscles and bones.
In order for any structure to be stable, it needs to have a good foundation and supporting structures. This can easily be seen with homes, buildings, and skyscrapers. Humans are the same. Our body’s internal support structure is made up of our skeleton. Our skeleton was wonderfully and masterfully created in such a way that allows us to achieve postures and maintain our balance without falling over.
Posture
Posture plays a pivotal role in achieving and maintaining balance. If a building has a poor foundation, the building will not be structurally sound. Likewise, if you have poor posture, your balance could be decreased and could eventually lead to a fall.
In order to see how posture affects us, think about the body as a building. The two legs would be the main supporting structures or pillars of the building, with the feet as the foundation. These two pillars coming from the foundation of the structure must support the rest of the building up top. (I can’t help but think of some of us having more shiny domes at the top of our building than others.)
The ground where our feet are and in between is called our “Base of Support.” If we lean too far outside our base of support with our hips or our trunk, we will lose our balance. If we stay within our base of support, we will be able to achieve balance easier.
This is important because many of us are walking around leaning forward with rounded shoulders. This can be due to many things including low back pain, being on the computer or cell phone too much, or too much sitting. When we are forward like this, our trunk is in front of the base of support below. This makes it so that we will either be off balance from the start, or we won’t be able to correct our balance if it’s suddenly challenged.