Most balance training[bal-uhns trey-ning]nounExercises that improve coordination, reduce fall risk, and enhance mobility.Learn MoreClose ignores a crucial system, hiking your fall risk. Four simple exercises target it. 

Here’s a challenge for you: Stand on one foot. Not too hard, right?

Now close your eyes.

If that got much harder, you just met your vestibular system, the part of your inner ear that’s doing an enormous amount of work every moment you’re upright.

Most balance work focuses on single-leg and core exercises. And those matter. But balance isn’t just about muscular output. It’s the product of three inputs working together: your legs and joints, your vision, and your vestibular system — the fluid-filled canals in your inner ear that detect head movement and orientation. When those three systems integrate cleanly, you stay upright. When any one of them degrades, your fall risk goes up. 

The vestibular system tends to erode with time. In fact, one study notes that over a third of adults over 40 show signs of vestibular dysfunction, and those whose dysfunction was clinically symptomatic had a 12-fold increase in the odds of falling. According to the CDC, falls are the top cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries in older adults, with the rate of deaths climbing 21% between 2018 and 2024. 

The good news? Experts say the vestibular system is trainable, meaning a few targeted exercises can make it stronger — especially when you work it alongside the other two pillars of balance. 

Functional and Targeted Training Both Work

A 2024 review in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology found that training functional movement patterns can improve balance and vestibular function. Crucially, the review found that functional training like lunges, single-leg deadlifts, and Czech get-ups improved these outcomes to a greater extent than generic exercise.

There’s also evidence for directly training the vestibular system. A 2015 experiment split women aged 60 to 76 into two groups: one doing traditional exercises, the other doing a vestibular-stimulating program of cyclical head and body movements.

The vestibular group showed improvements in postural stability with eyes closed — a condition which forces the brain to rely on its inner-ear signals with no visual backup. Traditional training didn’t produce the same effect.

That detail matters. Eyes-closed balance is a great test of how well your vestibular system is actually working.

How to Start Vestibular Training

Susan Whitney, DPT, PhD, a professor of Physical Therapy and Otolaryngology at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the country’s leading researchers in vestibular function, is candid about where the science currently stands: “No one knows what ‘exercises’ are best to optimize the vestibular system or inner ear.”

But she has a working hypothesis grounded in physiology: “Personally, I would work on keeping one’s neck flexible and focusing on moving the head in different directions at different speeds while keeping objects in focus.”

The mechanism she’s referring to is the vestibulo-ocular reflex, the automatic coordination between your head movement and your eyes that keeps your vision stable as you walk, turn, or pivot. When it’s sharp, the world stays clear and you stay stable. When it degrades, you get subtle instability, dizziness, and over time, falls.

“The signals in the vestibular system are ‘driven’ by movement,” Whitney says, “and movement is key to life.” In practice this can mean any movement that keeps the neck mobile. Move your head — up and down, side to side, at different speeds — while trying to hold a visual target in focus. It could be an object at the gym or your home, or even a finger held in front of your face.

“It has always made sense to me that if you exercise your eyes and move (stimulate your vestibular system) that you will optimize health,” she says. “As always, movement is one of the best ways to ‘super age.'”

4 Easy Exercises to Try Today

When you do your regular workout, add these to your existing routine:

• Gaze stabilization drills. Hold a finger or a small object at arm’s length. Move your head left and right, then up and down, keeping the target in sharp focus. Start slow. Build speed over weeks.
• Head turns during cardio. While walking on a treadmill or outside, turn your head side to side at a steady rhythm (be careful when you’re just starting with this one — you don’t want to pull a muscle).
• Eyes-closed single-leg stance. Stand on one leg, close your eyes, and hold for up to 30 seconds.
• Daily neck mobilitymoh-bil-i-tee]nounThe ability to move freely and easily through a full range of motion.Learn MoreClose work. Ear-to-shoulder holds and circular rotations keep your neck loose enough to feed your inner ear the movement signals it needs.

Better balance is one of the crucial markers that keep you strong, safe, and active later into life. It’s time to start taking balance training seriously — and including vestibular exercises with it.

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