The Becaboard: a balance board with a medical use

Originally published in GP magazine .

Written for GP magazine around 2005. This is the version I submitted - the published article may have been edited.

My wife hates skateboards with a vengeance. She just hates the noise of them constantly banging against a hard surface. However, my sons have a fascination for them. Luckily for her, we moved house about 18 months ago and there is nowhere suitable for skateboarding around our house. Come to think about it, maybe this was her plan? Since the move my youngest son would get out his skateboard and try in vain to have a go on the gravel or grass. My wife was sympathetic.

Much to my son’s delight, a friend recently gave us a Becaboard to try out. It is basically a skateboard without wheels and consists of a wooden board on top of a roller. The board is several centimetres thick and is the size of a large skateboard; the roller is a black plastic cylinder about the same diameter as a toilet roll and is hollow so that it can be filled. The board is advertised as a balance board which can be used in its own right as a fun activity or can be used as a training aid for other sports such as skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding and wakeboarding.

Although it is a very simple idea, it can be quite good fun to use and surprisingly difficult to master. The surface upon which you place the board can make a great deal of difference to how difficult it is. We tend to put it on grass, which slows the rocking motion, making it easier and making any falls softer. On a hard surface such as tarmac the board moves very quickly and could be quite dangerous without safety wear, which is recommended in any case. You can also slow it down even more by filling the roller with sand or suchlike.

The first aim is to balance on the board with the roller in the middle, and once this is mastered, try balancing with the roller at different positions. There is a trick where you have the roller at one end of the board with your feet facing along the board that I am currently working on, much to my sons’ amusement. Moving the board up and down slowly without touching the floor, shifting weight from one foot to the other, is also considered a basic skill. If you look on the board’s website there are several more advanced tricks that can be done, similar to skateboarding tricks. On grass the board hardly makes any noise, apart from the screams of people falling off.

During the summer we left it outside on the grass and all the family would have a go, even my wife, who is much more fun than I am making out. Friends and visitors were all tempted into showing off on it. However, it is surprising just how bad some people are at it, and luckily we didn’t have any major injuries. At my wife’s practice barbecue it was a focal point after the bouncy castle, and most staff and kids had a go, though very few of the partners, who were apparently trying to retain a level of dignity.

On a serious note, balance is considered important in numerous sports including golf, skiing and many racket sports, and getting one for your kids could allow you to have a go when they weren’t looking and improve your swing.

What has this all to do with medicine, you might ask? Well, poor balance, or more specifically poor proprioception, is the cause of many people suffering recurrent ankle injuries, either whilst playing sport or just in normal life. Many people say they have a weak ankle; however, this is often a misinterpretation of the fact that after an ankle sprain their proprioceptive receptors don’t work as well. Basically their ankles can turn over further without them noticing it and correcting. This means they are more likely to sprain the ankle again on uneven ground or on stepping up or down. Luckily, ankles can be retrained. Physiotherapists specialise in this; however, as we currently have an eight-week wait, and the earlier it is started the better, I teach my patients simple proprioceptive exercises such as balancing on one leg while catching a ball, either off a wall or to and from another person. Wobble boards - a board on a ball - have been around for some time to help with this, but the Becaboard is an ideal thing to recommend to sporty types with ankle injuries to help them rehabilitate and improve their game.

With all this improved balance, our latest purchase has been an all-terrain mountain board for going down hills. Both my wife and sons love it, but I haven’t been brave enough to have a go as yet!