Benefits of Exercise Balls

You might have seen people working out with those big fitness balls at the gym but never tried one yourself. They are actually a very versatile piece of equipment that almost anyone can use — no matter your age or fitness level. Whether you call it a stability ball, exercise ball or just fitness ball, you should try it.

Just sitting on the ball, you use some muscles to try to keep balanced. So when you are doing exercises with it, you are working your muscles more than you would doing the same exercise lying on a bench. Exercise balls can help you improve your core strength and balance. Beginners should start out with a softer ball that isn’t overly inflated. The firmer the exercise ball is the more difficult the exercise will be.

Lying with the ball under your back, you can do crunches, oblique twists and other “sit-up” type moves. You can also work with weights to do a multitude of exercises. The ball can be used for just about every type of exercise imaginable.

Here are a quite a few exercises you can do with the stability ball, both by laying/sitting on it or holding it.