Touched by fame – meeting Duncan Armstrong OAM at NSW Parliament House

I was very excited to meet Olympic gold swimming star Duncan Armstrong OAM on 18 September 2025 at Parliament House, Sydney.

Balance Metrix was there at the invitation of Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA)’s General Manager Policy & Advocacy Scot MacDonald for their Are You A Balanced MP? event hosted by his wife the Hon. Aileen MacDonald OAM MLC and her colleague the Hon. Geoff Provest MP.

Duncan is also the General Manager Stakeholder Engagement for ESSA and he’s a gregarious, knowledgeable media drawcard too, so I was buzzing with excitement when I had my photo taken with him and the other very important people there. It was good also to finally meet ESSA’s Dr Isobel King who looks after their aged care policy portfolio. There was a large contingent of ESSA members there too testing the pollies’ grip strength, blood pressure and sit-to-stand performance.

Two of our new Better Balance Initiative partners – accredited exercise physiologists Jo MacAllan from MacAllan Health and Dylan Slater from Think and Move – supported me for the Balance Mat testing component, leaving me free to swan around and do some serious networking. If you know me, you’ll know that I was in my element. It was a great opportunity for the Balance Metrix crew to raise awareness among the MPs involved – and for them to take a message back to their communities – about the important part that exercise prescription combined with balance testing can play in falls prevention for their older constituents.

Altogether we tested the postural sway of 35 MPs and others on what was a very lively and fun morning that had the overall aim of educating the NSW politicians who attended about the integral role that accredited exercise physiologists play in healthcare.

On the day, Aileen and Duncan were the champion scorers, with close to zero postural sway recorded for Aileen and 0.54 for Duncan.

Accredited Exercise Physiologists Dylan Slater from Think and Move and Jo MacAllan from MacAllan Health have signed up for and are helping us promote the Better Balance Initiative – a locally run AEP-led balance testing and exercise prescription model project that aims to help older Australians reduce their falls risk. If you’re an accredited exercise physiologist and you’d like some extra work with older Australians in your local area please contact us.

Olympic swimming star and ESSA General Manager Duncan Armstrong OAM shows how well balanced he is.

The Hon. Aileen MacDonald OAM MLC was the champion balance scorer, proving she is indeed “a well balanced MP”.

Another exciting brush with fame for me, this time with the Hon. Aileen MacDonald OAM MLC.

Here I am photo-bombing a picture of the Hon. Aileen MacDonald OAM MLC and ESSA’s Dr Isobel King.

Jo MacAllan with our own, very supportive local member – the Hon. Rob Dwyer MP, Member for Port Macquarie.

The Hon. Ray Williams MP, Member for Kellyville, expressed interest in helping us establish a local Better Balance Initiative.

Are your clients well balanced?

How would you know how well balanced your clients are without a Balance Mat? (If you’ve bought or subscribed lately, that’s great. Well done!)

You can use the Balance Mat data to inform your rehabilitation programs, monitor postural sway and reduce your clients’ falls risk through postural sway testing combined with progressive strength and balance exercises. And don’t forget that the Balance Mat from Balance Metrix is a TGA-approved device. You can get it for just $198 incl. GST (via a one-time setup fee), then $51.15 incl. GST per month, with no lock-in contracts and the first month free or you can buy outright. The Multimetric Balance Mat (good for falls risk assessment) can tell you whether a client has low, medium or high postural sway in just 20 seconds per test in the normal and semi tandem stances. The same system also allows you to test people’s postural sway in the tandem, left foot and right foot stances.

As Jo and Dylan proved at Parliament House, Balance Mat technology is highly portable. And perhaps the best thing about it is that it allows you to test, re-test and repeat postural sway assessments over the ensuing months and years. It’s that simple.

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