Do you experience eye fatigue at the end of a long day at work?
Improve your eyesight along with your balance and at the same time, reduce pain, and improve your overall fitness.
Without sufficient eye muscle exercise people suffer from double vision and may have chronic tension in their neck. When my clients begin doing eye exercises as part of a regular warmup. My clients enjoy a noticeable difference in strength, balance, and mobility.
Doing these eye exercises may even increase your longevity.
What to consider
Being able to balance on one leg is not only a skill but a necessity when it comes to walking and staying healthy. Modern life has led us to spend long hours being seated at work with our eyes fixated on a near-distance computer screen. This lack of movement of our bodies and our eyes in combination with aging is a clear factor that leads to injury and disease. Over time, our ability to walk efficiently or to stand on one leg becomes compromised. Those many hours on the computer resulting in static posture lead to decreased visual acuity, poor sensation in the feet and slower reflexes of our nervous system.
Often times when we think about improving balance and performing balance exercises, we think we need to be on unstable surfaces. The fitness industry and some physical therapists believe that we need to be on a Bosu, Dynadisc, wobble board, Airex pad or any unstable surface to improve balance.
Surprisingly, this is not true! You can improve balance more effectively by just standing on one leg and challenging the system through eye movements, or head movements.
Having good body balance is the result not only of the proprioceptive system (sensing the ground, and your body’s own perception of space and time), but also the vision and vestibular system.
The integration of eye movement exercises is a great way to enhance and upgrade any current balance regimen or fall reduction program.
These are my top eye movement exercises. During all of these exercises, you’ll want to ensure that your feet are being stimulated to further activate the brain. Practice these exercises preferably barefoot and on a flat firm surface for best results.
Exercise No. 1: Eye reflexes
A. Stand on one leg and find a target in front of you to stabilize your gaze. Get an idea of your balance, this would be your baseline.
B. Move your eyes as quickly as possible to the right, observe your balance, and return to starting position or center.
C. Repeat the same sequence moving your eyes to the left, up and down. Take a note of which position your balance is more challenged. Repeat standing on the other leg.
By moving you eyes quickly you are eliciting the extra ocular muscles reflexes that affect balance.
Exercise No. 2: Vestibular reflexes
- This exercise is similar to No. 1, but in this case, you will turn your head quickly to the different positions, stabilize and return to the center.
By moving your head, you are challenging your balance by stimulating your vestibular system.
Exercise No. 3: Peripheral Vision
Start on one leg or tandem stance and begin to look for a target into the distance of about 100 meters. While staring at your target, start to take notice of objects and movement in your peripheral vision fields. What’s on my right, left, up and down? Call out what you see, but keep your eyes on the target. Breathe!!!
Hold for 15 seconds and repeat on the other leg.
Practice at least 1 or 2 of these eye movement exercises on a daily basis. Everyone responds to eye movement exercises differently which means you may only want to start with one exercise. If your balancing on one leg feels too compromised, perform these exercises on a narrow stance, on a tandem stance, or you can even regress these exercises while seated and progress from there.
Reduce stress and anxiety
Another benefit of focusing on your peripheral vision is to reduce stress and anxiety after many hours of staring at a screen. Just stand up, look through your window to the farthest target you can see, and perceive movement on your peripheral fields: left, right, up and down.
Why do eye training with me?
Here is what you will get from training with me:
- Learn how to warm up your eyes in just seconds
- Increased peripheral vision field
- Quicker decision-making ability (the quicker you can see the quicker you can make a decision)
- Improve your reaction time
- Decreased stiffness and reduce chronic pain by re-aligning your visual reflexes
Contact me for a custom personalized plan that will be best for you!
