Exercise balls, also known as stability balls, Swiss balls, balance balls, fitness balls or yoga balls, are as beneficial to athletes as they are to seniors, beginning exercisers, yoga students, pregnant women, Pilates practitioners, bodybuilders and physical therapy patients. By incorporating the ball into your resistance-training and flexibility workouts, you can gently deepen your stretches, improve balance and posture, and develop muscular strength and core stability.
Proper Positioning
Proper form and body positioning are important aspects to exercise ball training. When seated on the ball, place your feet fully on the floor, hip-width apart. Engage your abdominal muscles, sit tall and maintain a neutral lumbar spine, so your lower back is neither pressed flat nor overly arched. To get into a supine position, start by sitting on the ball. Walk your feet forward as you recline your upper body back until the ball is centered under your torso.
Flexibility Training
The ball is an ideal tool for flexibility training. You can use it to perform dynamic or static stretches. Hold the ball between your hands and use it to trace the shape of a figure eight to dynamically stretch your arms. To statically stretch your quadriceps, lunge alongside the ball. Roll it forward to gently deepen the stretch. Stretch your back by placing yourself in child’s pose with your hands on top of the ball. Push the ball forward and hold it, or slowly roll the ball from side to side.
Resistance Training
The element of instability introduced by the ball helps you develop core strength, even when your resistance training focuses on other muscle groups. With a set of dumbbells, you can sit on the ball to perform bicep curls, lie supine over the ball and perform overhead triceps extensions or lie prone on the ball to perform a reverse fly -- all while fully engaging your core. Body-weight exercises, such as pushups, planks and pikes, are significantly more challenging on the ball.
Stability Training
Many of the body-weight exercises in a resistance-training program develop muscular strength for both the primary movers as well as smaller stabilizers. Placing your hands on top of the ball for pushups not only increases core, shoulder, chest and back strength, but it also improves shoulder joint stability. Improve your balance by sitting on the ball and closing your eyes, lifting your foot a couple of inches off the floor, or lifting a foot and extending your leg.
Exercise Progressions
You can progress in nearly all ball exercises to take them from fundamental to advanced. The degree of difficulty in prone exercises is directly related to the position of the ball relative to your torso, or core. A pushup with the ball positioned under your hips is easier than one with the ball under your knees and most challenging when the ball is under your feet. In exercises dependent on limb stability, lifting one limb off the floor increases the challenge.
References
- “Exercise Balls for Dummies”; LaReine Chabut; 2005
- “The Athlete’s Ball: Integrative Training”; Rick Jemmett; 2004
- Perform Better: Stability Ball Progressions
- American Council on Exercise: Stability Ball Exercises
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