It doesn’t matter what gym you go to chances are you have see people using an exercise ball. These things are the one of the latest items to hit the fitness industry and boy did they hit hard. You can now get them in numerous sizes, shapes and colors, because you know how important it is that your exercise ball be matching the rest of the gyms color scheme right??? In case you havent gathered form the title of the post , I’m getting a little sick of seeing these things all over the gym.
Now Im not against using an exersicise ball for certain purposes, training your ABS seems to be the most popular of them and I believe this is where the exercise ball is best utilized. It allows for a grater range of motion and because of its lack of stability it requires greater recruitment of all the supporting core muscle to keep your body stabilized when working on one. They are also good for helping a person with balance issues or weak core stabilizer movements. So there are many practical uses for them and I will never deny that. I myself use them ocassionally when Im at the gym.
Now on to what this post is really about, using them for everything. Just because someone has told people that using an exersices ball is beneficial to there core and other stabilizers, they seem to feel like they must be used when doing every exerciser. This is definitely not the case and using an exercise ball in certain situations can be extremely dangerous and not to mention makes you look ridiculous. One of the worst stories I ever heard was about this guy that was doing dumbbell bench press on one using the 110lb dumbbells and the ball popped. I’m sure you can guess what happened as a result and if not let me just say it wasn’t pretty and required a lot of stitches.
I haven't decided whats worse about the above picture; the fact that the guy on the ball actually believes hes getting some benefit from this or that there is what appears to be a fitness trainer behind him that is the one that has decided to utilize this move for his clients benefit.
So please be careful when you decide to use an exercise ball for something it may have not been designed for and just because you see or hear about someone using it to do some amazing new exercise really think about how much benefit your going to get out of it and make sure its not just someones lame attempt to get more attention in the gym.
If your careful how and when you use an exercise ball you won’t end up like the people in the video bellow
