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A workout with a stability ball can be an education. For starters, you’ll learn that a dead bug or a windshield wiper are actually terms for exercises that are done with one. You’ll also discover that while these large, colorful, air-filled bouncy balls look like toys, they are tools used to work out multiple parts of the body. Want to learn more? Here are some tips from four Richmond-area fitness professionals on how to incorporate and use a fitness ball in your workout regimen. A caveat: Workouts with a stability ball can cause injury, so seek guidance and approach exercises with caution.
Beginner Moves
Ben Anderson, co-owner and a personal trainer at ReDefine RVA, uses a stability ball leg curl exercise with beginner clients. He describes the exercise as a sort of reverse plank: You put your heels atop the ball and roll the ball toward the hips. It works the hamstrings, the muscles on the back of the legs. “The nice thing about a stability ball is it provides kind of a variety for body-weight training, and it’s relatively challenging while being relatively safe,” Anderson says. He also uses an exercise called “stir the pot” for clients at a higher level, which involves planking the elbows on the ball and moving them in a circular motion.
Feeling the Weight
Evan Settle, owner and a personal trainer at Sweat LLC, says he uses a stability ball in his own workouts with dumbbell chest presses, seated shoulder presses and crunches. He says that using the stability ball can increase the difficulty of an exercise because it enhances core tightening and coordination to help you balance. Adding the stability ball engages the abdominal muscles, lower back and oblique muscles, he says. “Even sitting on a ball and not working out forces you to maintain a good posture and keep tight,” Settle says in an email. “Some people use it instead of an office chair or [watch] TV while on one.”
Putting the Squeeze On
Fitness instructor Deirdre Turner says her favorite stability ball exercise is the inner thigh squeeze, in which you lie on the floor, place a ball between your bent knees, and squeeze, providing a workout for your inner thigh muscles. She says it’s one of the few good exercises to pinpoint the inner thigh muscles. Another exercise she uses with a ball is called windshield wipers. It involves lying on your back with the exercise ball between the knees and dropping your legs from side to side. Turner says a stability ball is an excellent tool to change up one’s workout regimen. “It’s good to throw it in every now and then ... just so your muscles don’t sort of get in a routine and a rut.”
The Dead Bug
Emily Snow, fitness director and instructor at Turn Cardio Jam Studio, says her “go-to” exercise with a stability ball is known as the dead bug. It’s an appropriate name: You lie on your back and hold the stability ball in your upraised arms and knees and move your limbs in an alternating fashion off the ball, engaging the core. For students or workers who sit all day at a desk, she recommends an I-Y-T shoulder raise, which works the mid-back and shoulder stabilizers. A stability ball is a great tool to have at home, she says, providing a way to work certain muscles when you don’t have access to gym equipment such as a leg curl machine.
