Losing Weight At Home
Here is the second part of this series of posts about losing weight at home without going to the gym. This post will be about the exercise ball, also known as stability ball, gym ball or swiss ball.
Exercise Ball – Stability Ball – Gym Ball – Swiss Ball
The exercise ball is a really simple piece of equipment, which just takes some space. It has a diameter of about 65 cm, at least the one I have.
Other diameters are available. The smaller the size, the harder the exercises you can do with it.
This kind of ball is not the heavy one that replaces weights in rehab (medicine ball). It’s just filled with air.
Before becoming so heavily used in gyms and in core training, it was mostly used in pilates workouts. Somebody eventually called it pilates ball, too.
As a side not, I know of somebody who fills it with water, in order to make out of it an uneven weight to carry around to strengthen core muscles. Don’t do it at all, if you’re not heavily trained you could cause yourself massive injury.
As a soft ball, it can be used for stability exercises (exercises to improve your balance), as for advanced strength training and core training exercises. Anyway, balance exercises allow you to stretch your connective tissue thus increasing your core stability.
Most of all, it’s fun, since you can perform so many variations of standard exercises you’ll never get bored. If you learn to play with it you can perform full stability ball workouts.
Exercise Ball Exercises
To give an idea of the kind of exercises you can do with a stability ball, here is a short list of some of them:
- One-legged deadlift with stability ball
- Hamstring rolls on stability ball (two legged or one legged)
- Seated lateral raise with hip flexion on stability ball
- One-legged lunge with foot on stability ball
- Pushups with elevated feet on stability ball
- Wall squat with stability ball
And here is a page where you can see them explained.
These are just some examples. As you see, you can perform standard exercises by adding a degree of “instability” to them.
And there’s no limit to your fantasy. The most difficult stability ball exercise I’ve seen performed was a barbell clean and press balancing on the exercise ball.
These kind of exercises are really good for your core, meaning your abs, since they strengthen some muscles you would never use any other way with conventional exercises.
