Well, ladies
A woman came to me on Tuesday and I made her cry. Not on purpose. I just asked her to stand on one leg.
She is 52. Walked in strong. Told me she carried two grocery bags up her stairs that morning without stopping, said it like a flex, and honestly it was one. I said great. Now stand on your left foot and hold it for thirty seconds.
She made it to eleven.
Her ankle started doing this tiny stutter, this sideways correction thing, and she grabbed the wall and laughed but she was not laughing. She said I used to do this in yoga all the time. I used to be good at this.
I told her the thing I am about to tell you.
Balance is the first thing that goes and the last thing you notice. It does not leave like strength leaves, where you feel your arms give out, where you know. Balance leaves quietly. You stop standing on one leg because nothing in your regular day asks you to, and the system that keeps you upright just gets slower.
The little muscles in your ankle that fire before your brain even registers you tilted. The deep stuff in your hip that holds you over one foot. Your inner ear sending signals that used to arrive instantly and now arrive like a text from someone with bad service. 😂
The research on this is annoyingly clear. They tested grip strength, knee strength, walking, balance, all of it. Single-leg balance is the one that drops fastest. Faster than anything else. And it does not start at seventy. It starts around fifty. It starts at us.
Estrogen is part of it. I know, I know, everything is estrogen these days, but this one is real. When estrogen dips, and it dips in ways you can feel before any blood test catches, your muscles lose some of their coordination. Not their size. Not their power. Their timing. The conversation between your brain and your foot picks up static. That is what balance actually is. Not strength. Timing.
Here is the part I did not tell my client.
I know this because I tested myself first. Three weeks ago, demonstrating this exact thing, I wobbled at twenty-two seconds. Twenty-two. Me. I train people for a living. My left ankle did that same stutter her ankle did and I shifted my weight fast enough that she did not see it and I went home that night and stood on one leg in my kitchen with the lights off and I wobbled at fourteen.
Eyes closed is worse. That is not a threat, that is a fact. Your eyes do a lot of the balancing for you. Take them away and you find out what is actually yours.
I stood in my kitchen in the dark and my body told me something I did not want to hear. So I said something to my client that was probably too blunt (Sonia would say definitely too blunt) and she cried and I had to walk it back a little. I told her what I am telling you now: the wobble is not the failure. The wobble is the exercise.
So I started practicing. One leg while the coffee brews. One leg while I brush my teeth. Not a program. Just standing there. Three weeks, twenty-two seconds to forty-one. I am going to pretend I do not care about that number but I do. 🙌
Sonia asked me last week why I keep standing like a flamingo when we are on the phone and I told her and she went quiet and I could hear her trying it. Fifteen seconds. She said "well that is insulting" and I laughed so hard I lost my own balance.
Stand on one leg today. Barefoot. Hard floor, not carpet. Do not hold anything. When you wobble, that is your ankle learning, your hip remembering, your brain recalibrating.
If thirty seconds is easy, close your eyes.
Try the other leg. They will not be the same. That is also information.
