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By Amir Nevo
BScK, CSCS, PFLC
Check out his DVD:
"I Bought The Ball, Now
What?"
The stability ball is by far one of the best inventions
in fitness in a long time. The stability ball allows you
to take your exercise routine to a new level,
challenging not only your conventional muscles, but
also a host of other muscles that would normally not
be targeted using weight machines in a gym setting.
Exercising with a stability ball is useful for any age,
gender, or level of physical fitness. It allows you to
develop strength through a full range of motion, and
it allows you to exercise on an unstable surface,
which helps improve your balance by challenging your
nervous system.
Improving balance is important because this transfers
directly to improving your functional capacity and
activities of daily living. When we are faced with
tasks in the real world we are often in an unstable
situation, so exercising in a similar unstable
environment transfers well to real life functional
activities. This makes ball training much more
effective than simply working with conventional
weight machines.
Another excellent benefit of exercising on an
unstable surface such as a stability ball is that your
body will learn to recruit your stabilizer muscles more
than if you exercise on a more stable surface. By
developing your stabilizer muscles, you improve your
core strength, and keep your joints more stable.
This could also mean improvements for people with
back pain since often times this pain is caused by
weak muscles that stabilize the spine.
The stability ball is a great exercise tool, but should
not be used exclusively. Your ball should be a tool in
your toolbox rather than being your toolbox. The ball
is an indispensable tool that can be used by people
of all ages, and makes a fantastic addition to your
exercise tool arsenal in order to help you maintain a
well-rounded fitness routine.
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