BALANCE BOARD

Balance boards, duneball boards, bump discs, balance pads, proprioceptive boards

Proprioceptive Board, or Freeman Board, if you prefer, those with a hemisphere applied underneath the board itself, cause instability.

Balance boards are used for both rehabilitation and prevention, practices that are primarily aimed at athletes, be they amateurs or professionals.

How is proprioception stimulated?
In the meantime, one must remember what the proprioceptors do. They send messages to the central nervous system to provide feedback information, signalling to the brain the movements the body is making.

Balance boards are therefore used to recover (or strengthen) the ankle and knee joints, restoring motor patterns that ensure static and dynamic balance.

This model of neuromotor stimulation is also extremely important in an elderly person, who can improve many muscular and nervous faculties with the use of the board.

Here are a few exercises listed on the basis of difficulty:

• when seated, one foot on the board to mobilise the ankle (very easy)
• one foot on the ground and one on the board to mobilise the ankle (easy)
• both feet on the tablet to try to maintain balance (medium)
• one foot on the tablet (difficult)
• two feet on the tablet with eyes closed (very difficult)
• as above with the operator disturbing the subject with small pushes (very difficult)

Obviously, the difficulty must be measured on the subject being trained and with respect to where they are in their rehabilitation.

In the case of a healthy subject, the last three proposals can be used for prevention and improvement of proprioception.