I get a lot of questions about balance. Mostly from people having a hard time throwing high kicks. But don’t give up yet!
The fact is that developing your balance is important for every martial artist, whether you throw high kicks or not. So, let me give you one simple exercise to help improve your balance.
If the video doesn’t play, you’ll find a summary below. Stay centered, my friend!
How to Improve Balance for Martial Arts
In self-defense, if you get pushed, pulled, or knocked down, that usually makes a bad situation even worse. If you fall down on your own, well, that’s just humiliating! Let’s stop that from happening!
My first teacher in the martial arts was a guy named Bruce Lee—maybe you’ve heard of him. In his collection of notebooks, the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, he shared this advice—
Feel yourself in a balanced state. … Feel the difference by putting yourself in balanced and unbalanced positions.
Interesting. He also wrote this—
…balance might mean being able to throw one’s center of gravity beyond the base of support, chase it, and never let it get away.
Now, I can’t be sure what Bruce Lee was saying exactly, but for me, the big idea was that you shouldn’t always practice your skills the right way, you should also practice them the wrong way. That’s because sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is to learn how to not do something. So, here’s my tip…
If you want to improve your balance, go throw yourself off-balance.
Seriously—instead of losing control of your center of gravity by accident, lose it on purpose. Just throw your center around, chase it, and try to get it back.
The goal of this drill is not to look cool, it’s just to get better at moving your center and catching your balance.
Yes, it sounds crazy, but it really works! It works because instead of always struggling to hold your center, you’re actively finding your center.
Think of balance as a verb, not a noun.
Instead of trying to maintain a frozen state of being, keep moving and adapting… just like you would in a real fight.
Here’s another variation of the drill…
Pretend you’re in a real fight. Take a big punch, give a big punch. I mean, way too big!
Don’t worry about being perfect. Take that pressure off yourself and just have some fun being imperfect on purpose.
Get hit, fall down, throw terrible techniques. Be the worst fighter you can be!
One more variation…
Close your eyes.
Closing your eyes helps in two ways. First, it makes recovering your balance more difficult.
Second, you won’t be able to see everybody laughing at you! You’ll still hear them, sure, but at least you won’t see them.
That’s it! Take Bruce Lee’s advice—or my interpretation of his advice— and improve your balance by spending some time losing your balance. I think you’ll find there’s a lot to learn from being imperfect on purpose.
For more advice from Bruce Lee, check out, 7 Lessons I Learned from Bruce Lee.
For extra tips on developing your balance in a fighting stance, check out, The Worst Fighting Stance.
Sensei Ando! How are you? I of course have to throw in my 2 cents (where did that saying start)? Proprioception is where balance starts. These, as you know are the bundle of nerves in your spine that automatically keep you balanced. Balanced within whatever physicality one is familiar. Once someone sprains an ankle, gets knee surgery, hip surgery, back surgery, breaks a limb the proprioceptor system needs retraining. This is done by CLOSING YOUR EYES. Simply standing with you eyes closed and balancing using the good foot/leg or the unaltered side of your body and then switching to the injured or altered side, trying to balance with your eyes closed vastly increases the reset of your proprioceptors, reestablishing your automatic, balanced system without having to possibly re injure by falling or making mistakes while your proprioceptors are trying to reset by themselves. Practice. Practice doing things correctly first to reset the proprioceptors. You can test yourself by falling incorrectly of course but I don’t think practicing balance incorrectly makes sense until you’ve given your proprioceptors enough practice so they can do their job. You’ll find your students will have problems with one side or the other as they’ve most likely had an ankle sprain or broken bone and without resetting properly practicing while eliminating the sight their body has just made do. You did go into closing eyes!! Just wanted to throw this out there. Ask your friend and let me know? My knowledge is pretty cobwebby…during the cool down/stretch part of the work out is the best time to put them through blind balancing. Once they are proficient just blindly standing on one foot and the other then I’d have them do more complicated balancing, raising and slowly extending a leg or giving them a complicated little routine for their arms while standing on one leg. And in Hawaii, I saw so many of these ropes only a few feet off the ground that people worked on walking/balancing. Of course that immediately improves surfing! I would think as part of your equipment, you could do the same. Get your students to walk a tight line. The very very very needful of challenge students could do it blind.
Sharon! Always happy to receive your info dumps… and this is a good one!
Your advice is not cobwebby at all. (Great term, by the way!) Closing the eyes and taking time to develop your proprioceptors is still the way to go. And now you have me thinking about walking along the clothesline. 🙂 Thanks for being here!
And for real real real??? You were a student of Bruce Lee? How old are you? Seriously, you knew the guy?? Again, how old are you? Grins!!!
Just watched your video…you are just the cutest martial art dude I have ever known. And yes, you would be a damn good dancer!
Doing this I think, would be best after a student has achieved balance with eyes closed on both legs. I’d also suggest someone else pushing and pulling a body off balance, another to stand and spot. I really like the idea of the tight line rope walking thingy…wish I had thought of this while I had classes. Grins! You are a doll!! How big are your classes? Do you have waiting lists to be able to become your student? (if not you should post fake ones just so the new student feels privileged thus will work harder thinking they’ve got a valuable spot. Humans are so needy. The higher the money value, the harder it is to get a spot and the heavier by weight something is gives VALUE to a purchasable THING. They will work harder and see and tell more positives to others. They will welcome the pain and be less likely to quit…able to handle pain they perceive has value. Just trying to reach more people using their perception of value to change this kind of thinking! Grins.
Hi Sharon! Thanks for all the good advice. I’m a big fan of being pushed around as a balance drill. And if people want to pay me to push them around, I’m a fan of that, too! 🙂
Thanks sir I will try try this as soon as possible….
Excellent! I hope it helps! 🙂