Beginner Exercises to Improve Stability Using a Ball

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to introduce the stability ball. You may hear it called the exercise ball or the physio ball, but they all serve the same purpose to strengthen our core. Our core consist of all the abdominal torso pivot muscles that basically keep the body upright. Without a good core your skeletal system, your bones would fall down to the ground. Everybody has a core, it's just a matter of how strong your core is. When you strengthen your entire abdominal system, your front abs, your obliques, your lower back, your erector spinae, your hips flexors, you can do just about every exercise in the gym including the most advanced abdominal exercises. Now, contrary to believe, you don't have to do 200 situps in order to get a good ab workout. That actually defeats the purpose. What you need to do is come up with a couple of good solid movements and keep the repetitions from like 15 to 20, just a couple of sets is all you need. Once again, as you become more advance you can add a medicine ball or a dumbell or a weight plate to your movements. We're going to start off with the movement you don't see quiet often but it's very beneficial to strengthening the core right away. It's called the reverse hyper extension. You begin by getting your knees on the ground parallel to the floor and the back of your feet braced up against the wall or table, make sure they're braced well. Make sure your belly button rests on the ball so you're kind of extended forward, place your hands on your ears and you're just going to lean forward towards the floor and then squeeze your lower back and rise up just enough to feel a good squeeze. Lower yourself back down and raise yourself back up. Once again, lower yourself back down with the hips and then raise yourself back up. If you noticed the movement was very fluid, very controlled, not a whole lot of hurky jurky movements are necessary there. Do that about 10 to 12 times. When you get comfortable you can try the advanced version."