It's not just ONE exercise that improved my balance

No one likes to admit they need help.  I've found that some older adults are hesitant to join "fall prevention" programs because if they did, they would be admitting weakness. Women are by far more likely to join balance training classes and thanks to their loving wives, more men are joining my classes.

One gentleman whose wife had to coax him to join the class, did amazingly well. His posture improved and his walking gait was steadier.  During the last week of class he admitted that his balance was better but he didn't know what exercise made the difference.  He said, "I think it was the cumulative effect of all the drills that improved my balance".

And he's right; a healthy brain needs activation. Because everyone is different and no two brains are the same, the types and amounts of stimulus will vary from person to person.  The key to great movement, better balance, improved vision, quicker reaction speeds and better posture is finding the type and right amount of activation YOUR brain needs.

That's what we do in my four-week Brains and Balance Training classes; systematically activate the different areas of the brain.  The brain has different parts that do different things.  Because neurons that lie together fire together, activating one area of the brain stimulates other areas.

How do you know what drills make you better?  You assess and reassess.  In the fitness world, "You're guessing if you're not assessing" is a golden rule among top-notch trainers.  Seriously, why would you want to do a drill or exercise that makes your body movement worse?  You don't.  That's why you need to assess and reassess to see how your body (and brain) are responding to exercises.

In Brains and Balance Training, I give adults tools for their "balance and fall prevention" toolbox in order to live a better life.  Different brains, different options.  Discover what areas of your brain need stimulation and enjoy the benefits of healthy functioning brain.

Your Brain's Movement Maps

Your brain controls how much each joint moves.  Our joints have receptors in them that tell the brain about things like location, pressure, and temperature.  This joint-receptor input forms a three-dimensional map of the body.

This 3-D map is located in the brain and this is known as the third sensory system called proprioception.  This spatial awareness is how your brain knows where your body is in space at all times.  The better your brain's map of the body, the better your movement.

Conversely, if you don't move a body part, the brain's map for that area is "blurry".  If you were injured and didn't rehabilitate 100 percent (which is defined as the ability to move a joint in all ranges of motions at all speeds), then your brain's map of that injured area is blurry.

As a result, when your brain has to move the previously injured area, movement might be choppy, ratchety, spastic, or rushed.  These types of movement indicate poor mapping, an indication that your brain doesn't know how to move an area.

The better the brain's map of the body, the more smooth and efficient the movement.  Think about a highway.   You can go fast on well-traveled roads.  Similarly, when you repeatedly practice a movement, your body (and brain) get really good at that movement.  

Practice makes perfect but you need to practice perfect.  That's because your body gets good at whatever it does, exactly how it does it.  This is known as the SAID principle or specific adaptations to imposed demands.  You get good at whatever you do, exactly how you do it.

For that reason, you want to practice all movements in good form or your body will get good at bad movement.   Your brain's mapping of the body is dependent on many other neurological factors but for this blog, just know that all movement is planned and controlled by your brain and your brain depends on receptor input to know where the body is in space.  

Take-aways:

• Your brain can forget how to move a body part if you don't move it.   
• Practice moving each joint in all directions at all speeds.  
• The better the brain's map of the body, the better your movement

Why Your Eye Doctor Doesn’t Give You Vision Training Drills

We are a vision-dependent society.  In other words, we heavily rely on input from our eyes to help us navigate through life.  This is because vision is the number one input to the brain.  Our brain relies on visual information to decide how to move and where to go.

Each eye sends over 1.2 billion bits of information per second to the brain.  That is an enormous amount of information per second, per eye, flooding the brain.  The brain has to decide which information is accurate in order to act quickly and appropriately.    Appropriately means safe.

Each eye has 6 muscles!

What's interesting is that vision is brain-wide event; it's not just the transmission of information on the optic nerve.  Vision includes the occipital, temporal, parietal and frontal lobes and there are four components of vision necessary for good "vision".

As Z-Health Neuro-Performance Specialist, I implement brain-based drills to train the four
components of vision.  What's awesome is that every brain is different and therefore, each brain needs different types of activation.  Through assessment and reassessment practices, you learn the types of vision drills your brain craves and responds well to.

What's fascinating is that vision is a skill and like all other skills, it will improve with practice however you must train all four components regularly if you want to improve your vision.  

Clients are blown away with instant results and often ask, "Why isn't my doctor telling me how to do this?

One simple answer:  the applied neurology training techniques I use are cutting edge, neuroscience-researched practices based on the science of neuroplasticity.  Neuropolasticity is the science of hope.  Medical doctors can't give you hope or they'll get sued if it doesn't work.

Eye doctors sell glasses, eye surgeries and medications.    Physical therapists sell costly treatments covered by insurance and are driving up the cost of Medicare for conventional approaches to movement.  

The medical community, doctors and physical therapists included, are going to have to go back to school to learn the applied functional neurology training techniques that I am teaching because more and more evidence proves new things about the brain and nervous system

Brain-based training is the future of fitness.  If you want to move better and see better, you have to train the systems involved, from the brain's perspective.   Find a trained neuro-performance specialist (Z-Health Trainers) and learn how to activate parts of your brain that need activation.

If you've tried everything and nothing has worked, it's time to try something different!!!!
Train your eyes for better vision.  Train your brain with better visual input.

Get those eyes moving!

The Neurology of Unilateral vs. Bilateral Training

Your belly button and balance

What does your belly button have to do with your balance and what in the heck is belly button training???

One definition of balance is keeping your belly button over your feet whether you're walking or standing still (Dr. Debra Rose, Director Center for Successful Aging, Creator of FallProof).   This is because your belly button is your center of gravity and your feet are your base of support.  Belly button training is learning to keep your belly button over your feet at all times.

Balance, like aging, is different for each of us because we have all lived different lives, made different choices and face different challenges.  Also, we all have different belly buttons!

In my Brains and Balance training classes, I teach belly button training to increase people's awareness of their center of gravity and how to move in such a way to keep their belly button over their feet.  I assign evidence-based Stepping On balance training drills for homework.

The only way to improve your balance is to continuously challenge yourself.  Since everyone starts with different abilities and challenges, there are modification and progressions that everyone needs to know when trying to improve their balance.

Don't wait for an accident, enroll today so you can learn how to keep your belly button over your feet!!!

Exercise science changes; so should your exercise program

Exercise science research is constantly unveiling new things about the brain and the body.  As such, trainers should be continually upgrading and modifying their training programs.  

Mike Boyle, featured speaker at the Perform Better's Learn by Doing workshop in San Francisco is a seasoned trainer; he's been a successful strength and conditioning coach in the field for over 30 years.   His presentation was amazing as he jokingly recalled some of the 'old school' training methods we trainers have all used and some of the trending themes in the fitness world over the past few decades.  

It was funny to look back and remember how we all ran out and got blood pressure cuffs to measure the transverse abdomens activation but at the same time, I was laughing inside because of the lack of knowledge he and other main stream fitness coaches have about the brain's function in sports and in life.

It was refreshing to hear Mike and Dana Strong acknowledge and teach the importance of respiration training since oxygen is one of the primary sources of fuel for the brain.  It was funny to see that they disagreed on correct breathing technique.  Ah, that's the fitness world; one trainer will teach you one thing and another coach will teach you something entirely different.

As Mike said, it's crucial that you listen and be humble enough to realize that the methods you've been teaching may have been wrong.  Things change.  With an overwhelming amount of information available to us at any given moment, it's up to you to do research.  Or find a reputable coach who is growing; one who is constantly learning.  One who wants the best for her clients.  

Brain-based training by Z-health is the future of fitness.  The neuro-revolution is upon us. Don't wait ten years for current neuroscience research to reach the general public.  Find a Z-Health Trainer and live maximize your potential.  

Are you training the two types of movement needed to prevent falls?

There are two types of movement; reflexive and voluntary.  Reflexes are subconscious, instinctual reactions that occur quickly.  We learn these instincts as children and unfortunately, we may never train them again.  Remember that entire nervous system runs on the Use it or Lose it principle.

Voluntary movement is conscious, intentional movement.  This involves the frontal lobe and you decide how big a step to take, how wide, and in what direction.  We obviously train voluntary movements like squats everytime you stand up and sit down.  A conscious choice is to get up and move because if you know that if don't use those muscles, you know you will lose those muscles.

In my Brains and Balance Training classes, I train both reflexive and voluntary movement.  We go back to the basics and learn when you need to react and then teach you how to react.  I teach you how to train both your reflexes and your voluntary movement.

A Del Webb class participant reported that she used the reflexive training technique when walking through the parking lot and it saved her life.  We all know those cement parking stops.  Well she didn't see it because it was dark and she was looking somewhere else when she accidentally tripped over the parking stop.  Automatically, she started taking as many steps as necessary to regain her balance...just like we practice in class!

Hallejulah!  A fall prevented because of reflexive movement!  She didn't think about how to react, it just happened.  Train those instincts and your brain will automatically fire when needed.

As a certified Z-Health Brain Practitioner and Balance Specialist, I re-train people's instincts and voluntary movement.  I train the nervous system so you know when you're falling and then how to react.
Practice.  Practice.  Practice.

Enroll in my Brains and Balance Training class and train the two types of movement needed for independent life; reflexive and voluntary movement patterns.

Website:  www.thefallpreventionlady.com

Learn and Do

I just attended Perform Better's one-day "Learn by Doing" workshop in South San Francisco.  This is an annual event for me and this year's presenters were interesting.  I really appreciated the opportunity to learn from one of the fitness industry's best, Mike Boyle; a renowned Strengthening and Conditioning Coach.  

As a lifelong learner and a movement specialist who is constantly striving to learn more about the human body and movement patterns, I keep an open mind when listening to fitness professionals.   However now that I am a Z-Health Movement Re-Educator who specialized in brain-based movement and performance, I find it difficult to listen to misinformation about the nervous system and brain function.

It was refreshing to hear two presenters encourage forced exhalation.  The reasonings were different but the message is the same:  BREATHE OUT THROUGH THE MOUTH.  Strong.  And long.  Feel your lower stomach contract as you reach the end of the exhalation phase.

The Neuro-Revolution is here.  Brain-based training is the future of fitness.  I guarantee it.  Don't wait for mainstream trainers to get the message; find a Z-Health Practitioner and get started today!

Everything beings in the brain; all thoughts and movement.    Learn how to train your brain for better performance in daily life.  HINT:  Crossword puzzles are not the way to a healthy brain. 

If You Stare at the Floor, You'll End Up on the Floor

    Our posture is 90% habitual.  Basically we walk through life on auto-pilot; unaware of our surroundings, not thinking about each carefully planned step or the balance skills and total body integration required to remain upright.

We take our balance for granted.  We take effortless movement for granted.  We take our brain's ability to receive billions of messages each second, understand and analyze that data and send a message to the rest of the body at just the right time, at just the right strength, and with just the right coordination for granted.   In actuality, movement is amazing.

Because most of our movement through life is habitual and because your body gets good at whatever it does, exactly how it does it, our posture is the result of our daily habits.  Vision and vestibular inputs have a tremendous impact on how your carry your head because all the brain wants is a horizontal horizon.

There was a very tall gentleman in my Brains and Balance Training class at Fair Oaks United Methodist Church.  He is a retired pharmacist.  Those two factors have resulted in very poor posture; hunched over shoulders, jutted out chin, head tilt forward, hips tucked forward, inches of his Thoracic spine are bend forward in kyphosis.

This typical forward head carriage is due to muscle imbalances caused by downward vision staring at the floor due to his fear of falling.  After eight sessions, things are looking up!

During the first two weeks of class, he would get very frustrated when I would correct his downward stare with, "Look at your vertical target".  He would shrug his shoulders and begrudgingly look up and correct his posture.  This is going to take some time because we've got 79 years of poor postural habits.

Good postural habits begin in lengthened spine; Spine long, chin slightly down and tucked back.  Every time you even think about your posture, lengthen spine and drop the chin and push back. Find the vertical target.

By the last session, this tall, lanky man was standing on a tightrope, ears in line with shoulders, shoulders in line with hips, hips in line with heels and weight equally distributed between the front and the back foot.  And he wasn't staring at the floor!!!

When asked what the best part of the class was, he said, "the ladies!".   It was amazing what he noticed when he quit looking at the floor.  The lone ranger in a class of ten women including his wife, this guy hung in there and noticed all the pretty face in the room.

Quit letting life pass you by.  Look around, pay attention to your surroundings.  Peripheral vision training can increase your reaction speeds by 25%; start paying attention to what you're not looking at!

Posture is dependent on where you're looking.  If you don't want "old age posture", look forward at vertical targets and stand upright.

The Fall Prevention Lady

82 yo Widow Overcomes Fear of Falling

The oldest member of my recent Brains and Balance class lived in fear of falling.  Many older adults live with the fear of falling because they fear that a fall is the beginning of the end.  Most people who live alone live in fear of falling and not being able to get up from the floor.  The thought of lying on the floor for hours or days, scares some people so much that they limit their daily activities.  They quit doing things they enjoy and things that need to be done for fear of slipping or tripping.

This is the beginning of a vicious cycle because the less you do, the weaker you become.  The weaker you become,  the greater the risk of falling.   This is known as the cycle of fear.

Fear of falling is a recognizable psychological condition that happens after a fall.  A little fear is a good thing but when your fear of falling interferes with your daily life, you need some help getting back on your feet.

My class student's daughter recognized this fear in her mother and brought her mom from Fresno to Sacramento to participate in my four-week brain-based balance training class.  

By the end of the second week, this 82 year old lady was sitting up straight, smiling and laughing in class.  In the third week of class, she walked through the obstacle course without her walker!  She was stopping and starting in response to verbal command and was no longer holding onto the counter when walking.   The last week, she was doing weight shifts with her eyes closed and throwing her arms back and forth while doing multi-planar lunges.  

On the last day of class, this amazing woman got up and walked eight feet with a steady, confident gait.  She announced to the class that she was no longer afraid of falling and that her daughter had to remind her to take her walker with her.  She has overcome the paralyzing fear of falling!

It's never too late to gain control of your body.  Learn how to react when losing your balance.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Practice drills that will increase your reaction speeds.   You do this with brain-based balance training.  Enroll in my Brains and Balance Training classes and change the way you live your life.  

Don't live in fear.  Live free.
Class schedule on my website:  www.thefallpreventionlady.com 

Conquer Hip and Knee Pain in Fall Prevention Class

Most improved student described how the four-week brain-based balance training classes taught her exercises to manage her hip and knee pain.

As a Z-health Practitioner, I teach people how to activate areas of the brain that inhibit pain.  In other words, I teach drills that turn off pain.  Based on laws of neurology, opposing joint drills help people manage pain.  

This 66 year old frequent faller explained how many times she had fallen and how worried she was about falling again.  While her goal was to become more steady when walking, she surprisingly learned exercises to take her out of pain.

She doesn't have hip or knee pain anymore.  She learned drills to increase her awareness of surroundings, how to react to imbalances and what to do if she is falling.   Mostly, she increased her lower body flexibility by nearly one foot!

While she was seven inches from touching her toes on day one, she can now reach six inches past her toes!  Her legs are significantly stronger as evidenced by standing up five more times in 30 seconds!  She moves more stable and with greater confidence as shown by her ability to get up and walk around a cone nearly two seconds faster!

Gain control of your body.  Gain confidence.  

Lose your fear of falling.  Lose your pain.  

Enroll in my brain-based Balance Training classes. YOu're worth it!  Your future depends on it.
February:  Woodland Senior and Community Center
March:  Fair Oaks and Rancho Cordova and Rocklin
April:  Woodland Senior and Community Center

First Brains and Balance Class of 2019 is the Best in My Career

I just completed my first four-week Brains and Balance Training session of 2019 and the post-testing scores showed the most improvement in the fifteen years I've been teaching fall prevention classes!



I am so proud of the eleven adults who came to the classes at the Fair Oaks United Methodist Church and put in the work to improve lower body strength, lower body flexibility and dynamic balance to reduce risk of falling.  In other words, they got stronger, more flexible, and better balance for quicker reaction speeds.

Brain-based training is a new approach to an old problem; loss of balance and falls.  This diverse group of older adults were willing to try sensory activation and muscle training and the results were amazing.  Their ages ranged from 59 to 82 and one used a walker for mobility while another walks four miles daily.  

After eight sessions in four weeks, four people improved lower body strength by 5.  In other words, four people were able to stand up and sit down five more times in 30 seconds.   That's an amazing improvement in such a short time that translates into reduced risk of falling. 

The most improved participant was a 66 year old frequent faller.  On the first day, she couldn't touch her toes; her hand was nearly 7 inches from her feet.  On the last day, this amazing woman reached 6 inches past her toes in the same test!  She gained over 11 and a half inches in lower body flexibility.  That is a new record for ANY STUDENT in my fifteen year career.  Congratulations! 

Two other students improved their lower body flexibility over three inches.  Lower body flexibility is necessary for a safe and stable walking gait and tight hamstrings are directly related to low back pain.  No more back pain!!!

The third senior fitness test measures dynamic balance and agility.  This is a life skill needed for safe movement through life so you can react timely to life's imbalances.   The youngest student of the group increased her timed Up and Go test by seven full seconds!  The oldest student of the class improved her time and walked stronger and more steady without using an assistive device.  

These  pre-and post Senior Fitness Test  numbers show objective, measurable data.  This data is invaluable to students who put in the work and do not realize how much they've improved.  What isn't measured is the improvements in posture, vision, reaction times and confidence.

Balance is difficult to measure.  These numbers don't lie.  How you feel is proof.  Get enrolled in a Brains and Balance Class or enroll your loved ones.  Invest in your future.