How To Manipulate These 3 Variables To Challenge Your Stability

Stability, it’s a pretty trendy term in the fitness world, especially when you through the work “core” in front of it. But did you know that stability is more than just core related. In fact you need to develop stability at all your joints in order to perform at your best.

Think about when you are riding on a wave or some fresh powder. From the ground up you need to be stable at your ankles, knees, hips and core. When you are paddling for a wave you need shoulder stability for paddle efficiency and if you crash land a jump when snowboarding or skiing you need stability at your should joint to preventing impact injuries.

So when it comes to your workouts, what training variables can be manipulated to enhance your stability?

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1. Base of Support

By decreasing your base of support during an exercise you are making things more unstable and hence forcing your body to compensate by working harder to stabilize. For standing exercises (eg dumbbell shoulder press) the easiest way to achieve this is to stand on one leg instead of two. Sometimes it might even be enough to move your legs closer together (for example in a swiss ball pushup) to increase the stability challenge.

For exercises where your arms form a base of support (eg front plank), you can decrease your base of support by raising one arm off the ground.

Unstable Surface Training – The other way to manipulate your base of support is through the use of unstable surfaces. By performing exercises on equipment like a swiss ball, balance board or suspension trainer you can increase the degree of instability and train your joints to stabilize more effectively.

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