To start off our first double-digit day in Bilbao, we listened to some more presentations focused on the topic of balance. Here, we learned all about how balance actually works in our body, the ways that devices currently address balance issues, and how balance issues are actually evaluated. A great portion of our discussion focussed on the clinical tests that assess balance and the issues that may arise from them. In order to get a better idea of how these tests actually work, we broke into pairs and assessed each other using the Berg balance test. In order to make it more difficult since we are overall healthy people with no balance issues, we completed the tests blindfolded. The blindfold definitely made the tests more difficult since your vision is one of the three factors that affect your balance. Experimenting with this test made it clear that the current way of evaluating balance is extremely subjective and truly depends on who is doing the evaluating.

This lead us to seeing the next version of the Oreka-Balance machine since it is an objective measurement of someone’s balance. This version has two separate platforms, one for each foot, instead of the version we previously saw that had one. Some of us got to try the new machine, and I found it extremely interesting that they are now able to simulate the action of walking with the two plates!

After our time at the school, we visited the football stadium. The stadium was absolutely beautiful and seemed like a great environment for a game. We even got to visit all of the behind the scenes areas like the locker rooms and press areas. Following our visit, we took a group visit to Casco Viejo to souvenir shop (and, of course, get gelato) and ended the night with much needed rest.