The Many Uses of a Stability Ball

A Stability Ball is a ball made of soft elastic with a diameter of approximately 45 to 85 centimeters and filled with air. The stability ball is also known as balance ball or Swiss ball. The stability ball can be used to challenge individuals of all ages and fitness levels, and has many different applications including sports conditioning, rehabilitation, and pre/post natal workout.  

If you're overweight or obese, you might be curious if you can use a stability ball. Yes you can! There are burst-resistant stability balls that often hold 600 or more pounds. Before you purchase a stability ball, make sure that  it's the right size for your height:

55 cm - 4'11" - 5'4"
65 cm - 5'5" - 5'11"
75 cm - 6'0" - 6' 7"

A leading benefit of using a stability ball compared to direct exercise on a hard flat surface is that the body responds to the instability of the ball to remain balanced, engaging many more muscles. Those muscles become stronger over time to keep balance. Most frequently, the core body muscles — the abdominal muscles and back muscles — are the focus of stability ball fitness programs. The stability ball can be integrated with different fitness programs such as Pilates, weight training and many other fitness routines. 

Weight training. Use the stability ball to add challenge to the movements and incorporate the muscles of your legs, butt and abs.

Abdominal training. Doing crunches, twists and other traditional exercises on the ball adds great effort to the movement by recruiting more muscles.

Flexibility, yoga and pilates exercises. The Stability ball is great for stretching and relaxing.

Used by kids too. It's a tool for workout but it's still a ball. Your kids will love playing with it, just make sure that they don't hurt themselves.

I've seen people using the stability ball as their chair while working instead of a normal chair. This is based on the theory that the abdominal and back muscles are constantly active in order to maintain proper posture and balance on the ball. Just sitting on a stability ball can be a real challenge and it's a great way to improve your posture when sitting in front of a computer, doing paper works or watching television.

A Stability ball is one of the important and needed items to help you strengthen your body, lose weight and work out your core. What's good about this fitness tool is that it's a low-cost investment with which you can do a variety of exercises. With the use of a stability ball, you can improve your posture, balance, flexibility, core strength and coordination. 

Read more→

The Importance of A Leg Workout

For a lot of fitness enthusiasts, we do not give enough attention to the leg workout. Legs are often neglected because it may not be the first thing that people see on your body. Having a big chest and broad shoulders may look good to other people but the legs improve the appearance of the entire body. Legs after all, are what we use to move around everywhere. Whatever type of sport that you are engaged to,  most of your power comes from your legs - whether it's basketball, cycling, golf, bowling, swimming or the likes. If you take care of your legs now, the greater mobility you'll have when you get older. You'll go more places and see more things without worrying about how far your legs will take you.

The trick to getting nicely sculpted thighs and glutes is a good leg workout which specifically targets the following muscle groups: the quadriceps (front of the thighs), hamstrings (back of the thighs), and gluteals (butt). Building these muscles will increase energy and stamina in everything that you do, including climbing stairs, getting out of a chair, squatting to pick up a baby off the floor, or walking the grocery aisles. You want to develop these muscles in a balanced way for optimal function otherwise you end up with problems on balance, and trouble with normal daily living activities. When doing leg workouts, you should develop both legs in a balanced way. If not, it can pull the hips and pelvis out of alignment, which challenges stability and eventually leads to back, hip, knee, and ankle pain. You might have experienced that sometimes when you stand, walk, sit down and get up, or climb stairs, your knees wobble with a little side-to-side movement at the knee joint.  It’s the strength and support of the inner and outer thigh muscles that help control this wobble.  If your inner & outer thighs are not strong enough to support the knees and hold the legs in good alignment, you will have problems getting the knee joints to track properly and this can be a contributing factor to knee pain.

When doing overall body strength training along with a proper diet, you can reduce your overall body fat, which includes leaning out your thighs. It is very important to realize that you can't spot reduce fat from anywhere on the body - including thighs.

Leg workouts really are a hidden secret to your dream physique, I hope you realize that now if you didn't before! 

Read more→