Login | December 24, 2024
Balancing on one leg says a lot
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: December 23, 2024
Through my long involvement in the health and fitness arena I’ve become familiar with a slew of different tests that exercise physiologists have developed to determine an individual’s state of physical fitness/well-being.
For example there are umpteen different tests out there to assess cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, body composition and biological age, with some of these tests being quite easy to initiate and others requiring advanced measurement equipment and tricky protocols.
So just recently the Mayo Clinic has advanced a thesis that a simple little test we’ve been using for quite some time is actually the most reliable test we can use to asses the metric of biological age (a snapshot of how well or poorly an individual is aging).
And this is a test that, on the surface of it all, just seems too darned easy.
The test I’m referring to is the one-legged balance test and it’s discussed in the Mayo Clinic research paper, “Age-related changes in gait, balance, and strength parameters: A cross-sectional study,” published in the clinic’s Oct. 23, 2024 issue of Plos One.
In this study the authors concluded that, “The duration an individual, whether male or female, can maintain balance on one leg emerges as the most reliable determinant of aging, surpassing strength, gait, and other balance parameters.”
Now to me what’s so cool about this finding is that both myself and my clients can quickly and easily test this metric without the need of special equipment nor the use of a special testing facility and testing personnel.
What’s more, the ease with which one can obtain this test’s results make available the opportunity to immediately implement a balance training regime such that one can improve upon this balance metric and consequently drive that biological age number downwards.
Okay, so with respect to the study and how the authors reached their conclusion, I’ll boil it down to the following.
The study was composed of 40 healthy men and women who underwent walking, balance, grip and knee strength tests.
Of those 40 individuals half were 50-64, while the other half were 65+.
Upper and lower body strength was measured via grip and knee extension tests on some pretty fancy custom made devices.
Gait was measured via walking tests that involved the use of motion capture systems.
And balance was assessed via two different tests.
The first, dynamic balance, evaluated the participants as they walked on a level surface.
Parameters such as step length, center of mass along with velocity were then quantified and plugged into a mathematical calculation that established what’s called a DSM (dynamic stability margin).
The second balance test was performed on a force plate in several different stationary balance situations (eyes open and eyes closed for both bilateral and unilateral leg stances) for 30 seconds/situation with each situation requiring the participant to look straight ahead with arms at sides.
Now according to the study’s senior author, Kenton Kaufman, out of all those tests - the strength, gait and the two balance tests - the balance test in which participants stood on one leg (their non-dominant leg) showed the highest rate of decline with age.
Why can so much be gleaned from such a simplistic test?
Well, when balancing on that one leg you’re instantly recruiting a slew of different bodily systems to work in tandem with one another, most specifically the muscles, joints and senses.
So that simple balance metric takes into account one’s strength, flexibility, vision and vestibular health.
Now as already mentioned, with such an easy and equipment-less test anyone can determine the current state of their biological age and then take the proper steps to train their balance.
And if you’d like some numbers to compare yourself with, there’s a Duke study that established some pretty good benchmarks for one-legged balancing.
People in their 30s and 40s should be able to balance on one leg for about a minute, those in their 50s should be doing about 45 seconds and those in their 70s about 26 seconds.
"If you don't use it, you lose it, says Kaufman, “And if you use it, you maintain it.”