You Can Really Do Something About How Clumsy You Are.
We’ve all hurt our toes , spilled our coffee , sprained our ankles, and dropped our pen in the middle of an important meeting. However, if you consider yourself clumsy, this is not just random annoyances, but a regular part of your life. Clumsiness may seem like a permanent personality trait, but it’s not. In fact, you have the power to stop constantly bumping into everything.
How to understand why you are clumsy
Do you always crash into things because you’re in a hurry? Is the recipe in your glasses a little outdated? Are you distracted? Is your balance disabled? There are a number of reasons why you might be clumsy, and you should start by narrowing them down.
Jason Harrison, strength coach and co-owner of Present Tense Fitness in Dayton, Ohio, explained that clumsiness can be due to poor balance, poor eyesight, or even an underlying medical condition, so before he starts working with someone, who calls himself clumsy, he asks them a series of questions. It’s also important to consider whether this is new to you or not, as a recent bout of incoordination can more easily point to a specific cause.
If you can’t easily figure out the cause, there’s no shame in telling your doctor, especially if clumsiness is new to you.
Try strength training
There are many benefits to working out and exercising, and while you can attribute most of them to looking and feeling better, your overall fitness will also affect how you move around the world.
“One of the things we know improves with good, solid, smart strength training is proprioception, which is basically our body’s ability to know where it is in space. Depending on a person’s training experience, they can see quite a significant improvement in their proprioception, and in many cases this can happen quite quickly,” Harrison said.
Tune in to your unique body
Harrison also said that an individual can face two kinds of barriers to purposeful movement: organizational and emotional barriers, or skill-based barriers.
“From an organizational and emotional point of view, people often face barriers to intentional movement that have to do with how they feel about their own body,” he said, citing as an example the reluctance to go to the gym that comes from discomfort in front of mirror. and previous experience of being called “unsportsmanlike”.
In terms of skill development, he suggested one-on-one sessions with a trainer or coach. Even if you’re not into fitness or weight training, he says, you can learn a lot about physical performance that will stay with you in the real world long after you leave the gym for the day.
Try these exercises and practices
Stephanie Weirauch, a Connecticut physical therapist, suggested the following exercises for anyone who wants to get rid of clumsiness:
- Stand on one leg. This is a great balance exercise. Stand with your feet together, then grab onto something stable, like a bar or chair. Raise one foot off the ground without letting your feet touch, and “consider raising the arch of your foot and squeezing your glutes together.”
- Diaphragmatic breathing. This can help you connect with your body and increase awareness of it, according to Weirauch. Place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach, then inhale through your nose, keeping your chest still. Let the hand on your stomach rise towards the ceiling. Finally, exhale through your mouth with some force, as if you were blowing out a candle. Repeat.
“Stumbling can be the result of weakness in the ankles and hips,” she said. “These exercises can help improve muscle coordination and joint proprioception.”