Exercise Ball Workouts

Squats With a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

Swedish exercise balls are inflatable vinyl balls you can use to strengthen and stretch your body, as well as improve core stability and balance. Because your stability is constantly challenged in slightly different ways, workouts on the exercise ball prevent your body from adapting and hitting a plateau.

Squats With a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

1. Stand with the exercise ball propped between your lower (lumbar) spine and a wall, pressing slightly into the ball. With hands at your sides or on hips, check that your feet are hip-width apart and slightly in front of you.
2. Bending at your knees and hips, slowly move into a sitting position with your knees over your ankles. Keep the ball in contact with your back as you move.
3. Return to standing position, keeping the ball in contact with your back as you move.
   

Advanced: Lift one foot 1 or 2 inches off the floor and try doing the exercise with one leg at a time. Switch and repeat with the other leg.

Birddogs With a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

Swiss ball training enables your proprioceptors to help you understand where your body is in space at any given time by sending messages through your nervous system to your brain. When performing exercise ball exercises, you are stimulating your body's proprioceptors and challenging your body's stability and balance.

Birddogs with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball:

1. Get on your hands and knees with the exercise ball under your abdomen.
2. Lift and extend your opposite arm and leg off the floor at the same time.
3. Reach away from the center of your body while balancing on the ball and keeping your hips stable
   

Advanced: Hold the position longer.

Push-ups with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

Traditional exercises like the push-up, when performed on exercise balls, are a total-body exercise, keeping many more muscles engaged than traditional push-ups. When performing these fitness ball routines with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball you are taking the traditional isolation exercises and turning them into a total body workout.

Push-ups with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

1. Lie face down with the exercise ball underneath your belly and your palms flat on the floor.
2. Use your hands to walk out to a plank position, resting the ball anywhere from your hips to your ankles. (This should be a position that provides for a challenging push-up, but allows your spine to stay aligned - with ears, shoulders, and hips in a line.)
3. Bend your elbows to lower your upper body toward the floor, keeping your shoulders away from your ears and your abdominal muscles engaged.
4. Repeat 8-10 times.
   

Advanced challenge: Perform the push-ups with your hands on the ball and toes on the floor.

Abdominal Tucks with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

These FitBALL® fitness ball workouts will improve your overall core stability. These core exercises on the exercise ball help strengthen the deep core muscles such as the transverse abdominis (TVA) and erector spinae. "Core" refers to the group of muscles that comprise your abs and lower back and their strength and ability to support your spine and keep your body stable and balanced. Strengthening your core muscles with these core training workouts will also help to improve balance and overall coordination as well as strengthen and tone your entire body.

Abdominal Tucks With an exercise ball

1. Get into a push-up position with the exercise ball under your knees and your palms flat on the floor.
2. Tuck your knees in toward your chest as the ball rolls toward your ankles.
3. Return to the starting position, staying balanced on the ball.
4. Repeat 8-10 times.
   

Crunches with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

Unnatural sitting posture due to a weak core will increase neck, middle and lower back pain as well as shoulder and leg pain. Traditional training programs and equipment used to strengthen and condition the musculoskeletal system generally neglect the core and other essential body parts such as the hips, upper and lower back and neck which results in an increased chance of disc herniation.

Stability ball workouts can improve your posture, strengthen your core and reduce your chances of injury.

Crunches With an exercise ball

1. Lie with your middle back on the exercise ball, feet flat on the floor shoulder-width apart, and hands behind your head.
2. Lift your upper body up, using your abdominal muscles, not your neck. Do not pull with your hands.
3. Repeat 8-15 times.
Advanced: Begin with the ball lower on your back, which puts more body weight into your abdominals.
Advanced challenge: Lift one foot off the ground and try the crunches. Switch and repeat with the opposite foot off the ground.

Balance With a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

Implementing an integrated training program with stabilization requires that you follow a progression. Stabilization begins with adding fitness ball routines such as simply sitting on the ball. This exercise can be worked into an advanced balance ball technique towards the end of the circuit as the muscles tend to fatigue and postural strength diminishes. Be sure to work at your level of ability and do not advance until you have adequate functional and stabilization strength to do so.

Balance With an Exercise Ball

1. Sit on the exercise ball, with your hands on your hips.
2. Lengthen your spine as you imagine a string pulling the top of your head up.
3. Plant your feet together on the ground in front of the ball.
4. Lift one foot off the floor and hold for 3 to 5 seconds. Switch legs.
5. Repeat 8 times with each leg.

Challenge: Position toes on the ground and heels up. Slowly lift the toes on one foot off the ground. Repeat with the other foot.

Advanced challenge: Lift both feet off the floor. Sit with only the ball touching the floor.

The T, Y and I stretch with a FitBALL® Exercise Ball

When you take a basic stretch like the T.Y.I. and perform it on the exercise ball, it becomes a whole-body exercise, challenging your strength and more of your body's muscles at one time. This will not only develop your core muscles, but help you react faster and become stronger. By giving these muscles proper attention with a stability ball workout, you will build balance, body awareness, coordination, and flexibility.

T, Y and I stretch with an exercise ball

1. Get on your hands and knees with the exercise ball pressing into your hips and thighs.
2. Keep toes down and knees bent, but lift your knees slightly off the floor. Tightening your abdominal muscles, try to lift your arms out to the sides of your body (into a T position).
3. Then slowly move your arms forward (into a Y position) and then straight out overhead (into an I position). Maintain a neutral spine with strong abdominals and shoulders out of the ears.
4. Repeat 4 times in each T, Y, and I position.
5. Challenge: Repeat the exercise with one leg lifted up.
6. Advanced challenge: Repeat the exercise with both legs lifted up or use hand weights.