Balance training exercises are incredibly important for everyone from the elderly to professional athletes.

It is one of the pillars of true fitness, and it just as important as cardiovascular health, strength, and flexibility.

What this workout does
This routine is excellent for both building balance and toning your body. That’s right, while you are building up your coordination and dexterity, you will also be toning your glutes, thighs, core, and upper body. You’re also going to burn a fair number of calories.

You will need…
An exercise mat and a physioball.

How this routine is structured
In this video, we have hand selected 8 different exercises for balance improvement. Our video will show you a demonstration of each exercise before you will begin; this will serve to prep you for the next move, as well as to give you a very short (10 second) breather before we jump into the next movement. There is only 1 round and the workout is 15 minutes total.

Calories burned in this workout
In the short 15 minutes of this video, a person will burn between 75 and 110 calories.

How often to do these exercises for balance
These are all relatively low impact moves. Whether used for toning or coordination improvement, you could do this 3-6 times a week.

Exercises in this Fitness Blender workout video
Ice Skaters – These are fantastic for toning the glutes and thighs. They also build stability and engage the core muscles. Hold onto a chair if you feel wobbly.

Single Leg Dead Lifts – You will feel this in your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. Modify this move to make it harder by doing the dead lifts with both feet on the ground. Make it harder by doing it on one leg and holding onto a weight as you lower to the ground.

Single Leg Overhead Crossovers – While you make the passing motion, upper body muscles have to work in a full range of motion and your lower body must keep you steady and upright.

Single Leg Head Nods – To do these, imagine that you are using your nose to write a capital “H”, with the head turn being the connective bar of the H and the nods on each side being the “legs” of the H. This is deceptively difficult, but if you find that you are cruising along without feeling challenged, try closing your eyes while doing the motion. If you can do this exercise without feeling challenged, you should consider moving onto our advanced version (see video library).

Kneeling Superman – This is a low impact total body exercise that improves your balance, largely by increasing your core strength. If you need to make this exercise easier, you can modify the move by only lifting one limb at a time, which gives you a more solid platform to do the extensions from.

Physioball Full Superman – Make sure that you don’t have anything that you can run into while you do these! You might feel a little silly while doing this one but they work to improve overall agility and control over one’s body. You will feel this one predominately in your lower back muscles.

Alternating Rotational Lunges – The rotation while in the lunge position challenges equilibrium. Hold onto a weighted object while you do these to make them more difficult. These are excellent for your butt, thighs, and obliques.

Agility Dots (both feet) – You can make agility dotes harder by doing them on only one foot (instead of the more stable option of two feet).

This Balance Workout for beginners is not necessarily completely easy, particularly if you have not trained for this particular aspect of fitness. If you need to make any of the moves easier, you can always stand close to a wall or chair in order to have extra support readily available should you start to feel as though you are losing your stability.

If you complete this routine and feel as though it was too easy or did not challenge you enough, be sure and check out our Advanced Balance Workout.