Seated Leg Extensions with an Exercise Ball

Series Summary

Many people want to lose weight, and despite claims for quick fat burning pills and powders, the best way to lose weight is still through proper diet and exercise. Exercise does more than just maintain physical fitness though. Working out can also help build healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility. It can also reduce your general health risks, boost the immune system, and help with depression and insomnia. Whether your reason for exercising is to lose weight, or improve muscle mass, working out is always a good idea to help promote the health of your body and mind.

Exercise balls are a great way to pump up your workout routine and workout your core muscles while doing your normal exercises. In this free video series, our expert will show you how to do exercise ball workouts. You will learn how to do leg extensions, hamstring curls, squats and crunches with an exercise ball. You will also learn how to incorporate an exercise ball into chest presses, twist crunches and lateral pull exercises. If you've got an exercise ball but can't figure out what to do with it, let our fitness instructor show you all the exercises you need to know to achieve that lean muscular look you've always wanted.

Video Transcript

"ALICE MONSAERT: This is a stability ball and it's been used in the fitness industry for several years now, and what it does is it adds a balance challenge to your workout, so when you're ready to progress to a balance challenge, you can do all your typical strength training exercises on the stability ball. The first exercise today to be demonstrated is called the "Seated Leg Extension." I'll have a seat on top of the ball and separate my feet so that I feel very balanced. I want to watch my torso to make sure that I'm in spinal alignment. So if I show you that from the side, it just means that I haven't collapsed to the spine, that I'm nice and tall, ear over shoulder and shoulder over hip. The exercise, I'm going to hold on to the ball, lift my foot and just extend the leg out. Now, it looks very simple but with this unstable surface underneath me, it's a little challenging. So, to show you that from the front, sit up nice and tall, shoulders back and relax. Pick up one leg as you do that, your weight will shift over to the side slightly, and you're going to extend from the knee to strengthen the quadriceps. So not only are we strengthening quadriceps, but we're also working on core stability as well, so seated leg extension to strengthen the quadriceps."