Few kinds of fitness equipment challenge your body like a balance board does. Frequent use of it can improve balance, coordination and agility. Even more, the constant movement of your lower body will build strength in your hamstrings, quadriceps and calves. Not only are there physical gains from activity on a balance board, but there are neurological benefits accrued through increased brain activity as well.
Balance
The balance board challenges your balance by constantly changing your center of gravity. By forcing you to constantly shift your balance, your body must adjust its center of balance and grow stronger in order to overcome the instability.
Coordination and Agility
The ankles, knees, calves, quadriceps and hamstrings must all work together to keep you from falling off the board. While this may take some time, you body will soon learn to adjust to each unstable movement of the balance board in a quicker and more efficient manner.
Proprioception and Body Awareness
The "body awareness" gained from the balance board occurs as a result of the constant need to coordinate multiple body parts in order to stabilize your body. This sense of awareness is called proprioception and is important in sensing the location of your body parts in relation to each other and to your surroundings.
Muscle and Joint Flexibility
Your body is constantly being engaged with the balance board. In particular, your ankles, knees, calves, quadriceps and hamstrings are actively working the entire time you are on the balance board. As a result, these body parts become not only stronger but more flexible from continued use.
Learning Effects
Dr. Jean Ayres, a prominent occupational therapist with the Institute for Brain Research at the University of California at Los Angeles, found that balance-board activity resulted in improved learning abilities. The brain activity that takes place when you stand solidly on the board causes you to train both hemispheres, or halves, of the brain. Because of this increased brain activity, information learned during a balance-board session is retained faster and for a longer period, which can help children and people with learning disabilities.
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