Fitness-minded women who don’t want to lift heavy weights or are bored with their current workout might be interested in a stability ball routine. Just add air and elastic, and you’ve created a whole new dimension to your gym exercises—stabilization and balance. Here are several stability ball exercises to try and a few simple precautions to keep in mind when purchasing and using your new equipment.
How a Stability Ball Works
When you use a stability ball in place of a bench for moves like crunches or dumbbell flys, your abs have to stabilize your body while you do the exercise. It’s a one-two punch: you get a stellar ab workout along with your regular routine.
Battling Back Pain
In fact, your whole back, abdominal girdle and deep transverse abdominus muscles all get worked when you use the ball. A 2007 Canadian study reported that some back pain patients showed improvement after using a stability ball. The researchers argued that ball exercises strengthened the muscles surrounding and stabilizing the spine, which could reduce back pain symptoms. Even replacing an office chair with an exercise ball was a challenging workout and helped strengthen abdominal and back muscles.
Stability Ball Exercises
Here are a few basic exercises from the Ace Fitness exercise library and Fitness Magazine, modified for a stability ball. It’s a great, full-body routine that will challenge your muscles and help you find a few new ones you didn’t even know you had.
Squats: With the ball against your lower back, lift one foot 2 inches off the floor and do single-leg squats.
Pushups: With your hands on the floor and the ball under your stomach, walk out with your hands until the ball is under your hips to ankles, as far as you can go with your back still stabilized.
Supermans: With your stomach on the ball, lift one foot and the opposite hand off the floor at the same time.
Hamstring curls: Lay on the floor with your heels on the ball. Keeping your hips high, bend your knees and roll the ball towards your body.
Dumbbell flys: With light dumbbells, sit on a ball with your feet on the floor. SLOWLY lean back and walk your feet out until your head and upper back are supported. Your knees should be at 90 degrees. With your palms facing inward, elbows out and dumbbells at chest level, slowly raise them in a circle until they are directly above chest level.
Purchasing a Ball
Buy a ball that’s the right size—you don’t want to look like a giant sitting on a tennis ball, do you? According to Fitness Magazine, if you’re under 5’10”, choose a 55 cm ball. But be sure to carefully read the sizing instructions, and test the ball out yourself. When you sit on the ball, your thighs should be parallel to the floor.
Proper Use
Make sure the ball is properly inflated—you’ll have an easier time doing the exercises if your ball is low on air, and you don’t want to cheat yourself out of a great, kick-butt workout. The ball should compress approximately 6” under your body weight, according to Ace Fitness. If you get a properly sized ball and use it regularly instead of your workout bench, you could improve core strength, reduce back pain and get six-pack abs—all while running through your regular old workout routine.
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