うたぴょんスポーツThis one came with a caption Uta chose herself: 'muzui', which just means 'this is hard'. No race today, no medal, just a living-room drill that turned out to be harder than it looked.
The video is titled '3kg Ball Lift, One-Leg Stand! Core Training' and went up on 21 November 2025. It is filed under core training and balance training, tagged simply as a track and field girl working on the basics.
Why this session
Uta runs distance, and distance running is mostly about staying upright and efficient for a long time, not about raw strength. Somewhere this autumn we decided her weak point wasn't speed, it was stability. Watch her run tired and her hips drift, her arms flail a little, her foot lands slightly off line. That's a core problem, not a legs problem.
So instead of another easy jog, this session was a single balance drill: stand on one leg and lift a 3kg ball. That's it. No distance, no watch, no finish line. Just one leg, one ball, and gravity trying to knock her over.
A 3kg ball isn't heavy in absolute terms, but held out away from the body while balancing on one foot, it changes everything. It pulls her off centre, forces her standing leg's ankle, knee and hip to make tiny constant corrections, and makes her core work just to keep her spine upright. That's exactly the kind of strength that doesn't show up in a stopwatch but shows up in the last 400m of a race, when everyone else's form is falling apart too.
We picked this drill on purpose because it's boring and unglamorous, which is usually a sign it's useful. Kids love running fast. Almost nobody loves standing still and wobbling.
How it actually went
Her own word for it was 'muzui'. That's not a complaint exactly, more an honest review. Within seconds you could see the ball pulling her arms sideways, her supporting knee flexing to compensate, her free foot hovering and dropping and lifting again as she tried to reset.
My job here was mostly to stay quiet and let her fight it out. I didn't correct every wobble. If I jump in every time she tips, she never learns what 'about to fall' feels like from the inside, and that feeling is the whole point of a balance drill. I counted reps, reminded her to breathe, and caught the ball if it rolled away.
Is this sustainable? Yes, precisely because it's short. A drill like this is five or ten minutes, not an hour, and it doesn't load her joints the way a long run would. For a kid her age, that matters more than the exercise itself. The risk with core and balance work at home is well-meaning parents turning it into a bigger production than it needs to be, adding reps, adding weight, adding a timer, until a simple drill becomes a mini training camp.
One caution for anyone who wants to copy this: a 3kg ball is a specific load for a specific child, not a default. For a younger or smaller kid, start lighter, maybe even empty hands, and only add weight once the standing leg is genuinely stable. Balance training should wear out patience before it wears out muscles.
No times today, no splits, just one wobbly minute at a time. Uta didn't love it, but she finished it, and that's the whole report.