About Stability Balls

Ask any fitness professional what the BEST piece of equipment available for developing killer abs, and they'll tell you - it's a ball!

One advantage to performing ab work on a ball is that you can easily adjust to work at a variety of levels - progressing as you get stronger.

Sitting in what is known as an "incline" position allows you to work somewhat gravity assisted and the ball supports your low back to help keep it stable. As you get stronger, you can adjust your positioning by rolling further back on the ball - closer to parallel with the floor - where you will be working against gravity.

Training with a ball also helps develop balance and what is known as "core" stability. Not only does it train the abs, but many more muscles of the torso are recruited to maintain stable positioning, along with the important muscles that support your head and neck. All can be strengthened over time through gradual progressive exercises with a stability ball.

Stability ball training - superior to crunches!

Using a ball for ab work requires significantly more muscle fiber recruitment than standard crunch training and requires less repetitions to reach fatigue. When you perform crunches on the floor or a bench, the body gets a rest as you release to the start, meaning you have to do more reps to fatigue. The ball forces your muscles to stay in the tension range, which will help you achieve faster results - in less time!

Not only can you do complete challenging torso exercises but you can also do a wide variety of exercises for all the other muscle groups of the body using the ball.

The ball can be used as a weight bench to support you as you do chest presses, flyes and other exercises for the upper body - and just sitting on the ball puts you in a correct position for seated exercises as well. You can do squats with the ball, hamstring curls, inner and outer thigh work, lat work plus a wide variety of stretches for flexibility.

Gin's video, Extreme Strength Circuit on the Ball, is a good example of various exercises that can be done by adding a step platform and dumbbells - by home exercise standards, very low cost equipment!