Why Fitness Trainers Want You to Start Using an INDO BOARD

What you don’t want is to live a sedentary lifestyle. What you do want is to be active. Why? Sedentary living is linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. Nobody wants that.

Where should you begin? You’ve got options.

You can check off a lot of boxes with popular weight-lifting and aerobics workouts. But what about balance? Weight-lifting and aerobics tend to focus more on muscle development and weight loss than improving your balance.

Why is Balance Important?

Balance is an essential part of fitness. You can check this article if you need more information about the body's lower extremities and how it’s linked to the support needed for a person to maintain balance.

Balance is a vital part of body fitness because, without it, you can’t do any gym routine, let alone stand up from bed in the morning. The medical definition of balance is the body’s function to maintain the center of mass over a base of support, especially during movement and other dynamic activities.

Without balance, standing becomes impossible and getting into sports is out of the question. Without balance, you won’t function normally at all.

Fitness trainers are fully aware of its importance. So they suggest including exercises that focus on balance in one’s workout routine. One of the suggestions coming from trainers is the use of an INDO BOARD.

What Is an INDO BOARD?

An INDO BOARD is a wooden deck placed on top of an air-filled cushion or plastic roller that helps you improve your body’s balance and strengthen the ankles, one of the body parts with a lesser emphasis in gyms. Ankle strength is essential to improve your mobility and flexibility.

For this reason, fitness trainers like Brock Davies, a National Academy of Sports Medicine or NASM certified trainer and CEO of HOMEBODY Fitness App, promote using INDO BOARD to improve a person’s balance.

He points out that INDO BOARD can increase proprioception, improve ankle strength and core strength weight control, improve posture, and help in the rehabilitation of injuries that may occur during day-to-day activities, especially in sports.

Further testimonials come from John Bransfield, a diving coach from the University of Connecticut. He routinely uses INDO BOARDs as a balancing tool for dry land training. He believes that there’s tremendous value in this fitness tool.

How Can INDO BOARDs Make You Fit and Healthy?

The INDO BOARD provides an incredibly well-rounded workout that can help you develop and maintain fitness and health by focusing on endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance, which are components of physical well-being.

Improving body awareness allows your body to orient your extremities or limbs fully. This level of awareness will help reduce the likelihood of injury due to loss of balance.

The INDO BOARD can also improve body coordination or the ability of the different parts to work together. You can’t do even the most basic chores if you lose coordination. Improved coordination means better activity in everyday life.

Another area of physical fitness improved by INDO BOARD use is joint stability. It means that the joints in the body become stable, stronger, and flexible through training. Using an INDO BOARD can prevent the likelihood of sprained ankles, knees, and other joint problems that might occur during activities.

Because you need to balance on an INDO BOARD, your reaction time improves. You can avoid slips and stumbles during balancing activities, providing you with safety reactions that will help you avoid accidents and mishaps.

Lastly, INDO BOARD use will improve long-term health by providing exercise that improves balance. As we get older, our balance decreases, which you can avoid if you maintain a fit and healthy body through exercise and the use of helpful tools such as an INDO BOARD.

How Do You Use an INDO BOARD?

The INDO BOARD requires a bit of getting used to before you can regularly include this equipment into your physical fitness routine. Here are some essential tips on how to use the INDO BOARD..

• Maintain a centered posture while relaxing the upper body.
• Keep a relaxed upper body.
• Keep your head and shoulders upright.
• Bend the knees two to three inches beyond the comfort zone.
• Roll your hips slightly forward while keeping the knees bent.

The INDO BOARD focuses on improving your balance, so the main obstacle to this is your mind. When you do the INDO BOARD, you’re not only training your balance but also targeting and engaging your core or the abdomen area.

Does Science Back Up the INDO BOARD?

Several studies back up the importance of balance improvement in the body. Here are some studies that support the benefits of the Indo Board.

• Improvement in ankle proprioception is one of the most crucial goals in exercise, especially in sports. Good balance is linked to better athletic performance and reduces the risk of lower limb injuries. No wonder fitness trainers recommend using an Indo Board.

• The use of proprioceptive training decreases the rate of ankle sprains in sports. It is a good indicator that training that targets ankle balance may improve one’s balance and, as a result, better physical performance.

• When done in combination with physiotherapy, the use of exercises targeting balance in people has a positive effect in restoring balance in individuals with hemiplegia following ischemic strokes.

References

1. CDC Maps America’s High Levels of Inactivity

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/0116-americas-inactivity.html

1. Assessing proprioception: A critical review of methods

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30356896/

1. Proprioceptive Training for the Prevention of Ankle Sprains: An Evidence-Based Review

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29140127/

1. Improving balance with wobble board exercises in stroke patients: single-blind, randomized clinical trial

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31348727/