Bodyweight exercises to improve flexibility.

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7 Bodyweight Exercises to Improve Your Flexibility and Balance:
We all know that fitness is an important part of our life when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

In order to lose weight and keep healthy, we need to incorporate regular exercise into our daily regimen. However exercises that only focus on weight loss or strength skip over a several key elements.

Incorporating exercises that focus on your flexibility and balance are equally as important. Both flexibility and balance are important parts of a healthy lifestyle and in some instances can prevent injury or the onset of other health conditions.

Here we look at 7 effective exercises for improving flexibility and balance.

7 Excellent Exercises To Improve Flexibility & Balance

1. Yoga: Not only does yoga give you a chance to relax and focus in on your core and breathing, but it is one of the very best exercise regimens for both flexibility and balance. Though there are various forms of yoga, they all focus on a series of stretches and poses that help to build up your overall flexibility and incorporate a natural balance. As you build up these two elements in your workouts, you will also find that you feel more balanced and healthier as well so it’s an excellent overall workout.

2. Pilates: Pilates is very similar to yoga but it focuses more on your core region. By incorporating exercises that use the core, you are not only strengthening this area but you are naturally increasing your balance and becoming far more flexible as you move along. This exercise regimen promotes doing certain stretches that are formed from the core and you naturally become far more flexible as you perform each set. You will see your flexibility increase after just a few sessions of Pilates.

3. Calf Stretch: This may sound like a simple warm up but it’s highly effective in building up both flexibility and balance. Stand facing a wall or chair and hold on as you rise up and lower down on your toes, putting the core of the stretch on your calves. This will even build up strength in the process and allow your legs to be much more flexible.

4. Side Leg Raise: Though this exercise is usually looked at primarily for balance, it can work quite well for flexibility as well. As you lay on your side, you raise your leg up and hold the position before lowering it. You are building strength and balance in the legs which support the whole body. As you perform more of these leg raises, you will also see that you become far more flexible and can raise your leg higher as you keep going.

5. Stability Ball: Using an exercise ball is one of the best ways to build up your balance and flexibility, and you will develop a well toned core area in the process. The stability ball is what you perform a series of poses and exercises on and you have to naturally balance to be able to stay on it, so you are building up this aspect of your workout. You will find that you feel far more flexible as you continue to use the exercise ball and continued use will even make you stronger as well.

6. Swimming: It seems that swimming shows up as a great exercise for just about anything. It should come as no surprise then that we see swimming as an excellent exercise choice for both flexibility and balance. As you work your way through the water, you are naturally working on your flexibility as your muscles are more pliable. You are working on balance and even strength making it an excellent overall exercise.

7. Running: Many people look to running simply as a calorie burner, but it can be excellent for building up flexibility and balance as well. It’s important to incorporate stretches to avoid injury, but running can make the muscles far more pliable and allow you to stand taller and maintain better overall balance.
The most effective exercise routines are those that incorporate a holistic approach to body strength and health. A balanced routine includes attending to matters of flexibility and balance as well, and these seven excellent exercises will help you do that while providing enough variation and interest to maintain your motivation as well.

Mary Ward is a blogger and enjoys writing about medical career topics, such as how to obtain a Master of Health Administration degree, job and education tips, and more.

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Comments

  1. Thanks for this! I was only saying in the last few days that I am quite lacking in flexibility and balance so this entry couldn’t have come along at a better time for me!
    I decided today it was time to get back into the pool, so there is one off the list. 🙂

  2. Excellent article! I’m a big fan of Pilates because you really do see great improvement in flexibility and balance (and posture!) within a short period of time. And I am finally going to give yoga a try in September.

  3. Some other things that I found greatly improved my balance were squats and lunges. The first day I tried them I couldn’t even do one walking lunge without falling to the side but after thousands of them my balance is much better. Now I can even add heavy weights to the equation.

    I know nobody wants to hear ‘squats and lunges’ is the answer to anything, but they really do work.

  4. excellent article as always!! i am actually quite flexible for a fatty, but it always feels good to do exercises that push it a little more.

  5. Great tips! I keep forgetting about pilates…always a great workout. I hadn’t thought about swimming. Is there nothing that it can’t improve? It just seems too easy and stress free…maybe I’m doing it wrong. lol.

  8. Excellent post – thanks for sharing these stretches with us. I know I need to incorporate them in my workouts!

  13. You always seem to be reading my mind!! This is totally the article I needed to read today!! Excellent tips!! I have been using my “flat” balance ball and I can feel the diff in my balance a little bit already!

    Thanks again for the timely information!

  15. Big fan of bodyweight exercises here! I do them as a workout about every three days, and as normal activity on every day 🙂

  16. While my balance issues have improved thanks to the Bosu ball, calf raises and walking lunges, I still wobble on a lot of exercises. Wonder if I should actually give that newfangled thing called Yoga a try?!?

  18. Hey, another thing running is good for – hooray! The only things on this list I don’t do on a regular basis are pilates and swimming (though I totally would if I had regular access to a pool). Being an ex-gymnast, staying semi-limber (can’t do all 3 splits still but I’m decently close) is important to me and how well I stretch after a workout directly correlates to how sore I am the next day. So I do it (most days).

  19. Balance is my doom. But I’m working on it.
    Flexibility comes a close second. I find that I need to develop more flexibility to become better with the strength. Who would have imagined that one impacts the other so much? Not I.

    Monday starts 2-3 weeks of strength exercises concentrating on the unstable -to get all those coordination neurons firing.

  20. thanks for the tips.
    I am a newbie runner, about 6 months in.
    last week my son was playing around with me and I was dodging his attempts to rub his sweat soaked head(EW!) on my shirt and he said that I was more agile than I used to be!
    It’s the little things! and that doesn’t mean the sweat! 😉

  21. Great post! I have really noticed a big improvement in my balance since working out and think it is due to the stronger muscles and improved flexibility.

  25. As a guy who works in fitness and can only just touch his toes… this post is a great reminder not to neglect flexibility as part of a holistic training regime. I’m not a particularly good swimmer so it’s looking like I might have to take up yoga or pilates!

  27. Hummmm. Well, Miz, I don’t do this often, but allow me to disagree.

    I may have said this before, but I’m gonna go there again. Flexibility and strength are not so much, in and of themselves, desirable. Excessive flexibility and excessive strength can both lead to serious biomechanical problems if left unchecked; having the capacity to wrap your ankles behind your neck is just as potentially unhealthful as being so tight you can’t bend over and touch your toes. Because the problem isn’t being flexible or inflexible; the problem is with balance.

    By balance I mean not only the ability to not fall on your face when trying to dodge your son’s super soaker. I mean that your muscles should be balanced with each other in terms of relative strength/flexibility. Many female soccer players end up with ACL tears because they’re knees hyper-extend. And usually it’s because the quads are too strong and the hamstrings are too flexible. Strength and flexibility are both present, but not in an appropriate balance. It’s all about balance.

    That said, I disagree with the assessment of running and swimming as beneficial for balance. The danger with those two modalities is that they’re both highly repetitive. Show me a dedicated runner who doesn’t have tight calves and hip flexors and I’ll show you a runner who stretches every day for at least 15 minutes. And just try to find a freestyle specialist who can stand up straight without a good amount of effort; yep, tight and overdeveloped shoulders. Point is, runners and swimmers both have to work *very* hard to maintain functional flexibility; triathletes are some of the stiffest athletes I know (of course, many of them don’t make time for any kind of flexibility work, either).

    I agree that there’s little better than yoga for flexibility and (more importantly) overall biomechanical balance. But the other suggestions . . . hmm, I dunno.

  28. Informative article! Thanks.
    How many times a week should one do yoga? Is one class a week enough?

  34. Superb news, I would thank to author becaus i have found many interesting knowledge. I will subscribe to this blog. Best wishes 🙂

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