Stability Balls

Another fun toy I was introduced to in P90x2 is the Stability Ball.  A Stability Ball, or Swiss Ball, is something you will find in just about any gym nowadays, but you may not know how to use it or even why it's there. 

The main purpose of a stability ball is to add instability to your workout.  That's actually a big concept of all of P90x2.  When you're on an unstable platform, whether it's one leg, on a medicine ball, or on a stability ball, you have to work harder.  You have to bring your core into the mix to keep yourself from falling over.  It's like getting an extra ab workout in without even trying.


If you want to incorporate a stability ball in your workout, you will immediately see that any exercise you do on a stable platform gets infinitely more difficult when you switch to the stability ball.  Any seated exercise such as a shoulder press, tricep raise or bicep curl can be amped up by sitting on a stability ball instead.  To take it to the next level, only keep one foot on the ground.  If you normally doing dumbbell chest presses and/or flys on a bench, try lying on the stability ball, with the ball at your upper back.  Once you can press the same weight as you can from a stable bench, you have it mastered.  Do you do incline pushups?  Instead of putting your hands on a bench, grab a stability ball.  The extra core workout is a burner.  What about decline pushups.  Put your feet up on a stability ball instead.  Bonus points if you can get one rep in before you fall of the first time.  Once you have that down, you can graduate to what Tony Horton calls the Impossible/Possible.  Put both feet on a stability ball, and both hands on a single medicine ball and start pushups.  I struggled just to get into position without tumbling off my first few times, much less actually do a push up.

When you look at any of these moves on paper, they don't seem too hard.  Once you try them, you'll feel differently.  My quick tip is to lock up your core when you start.  Flex your quads and glutes; pull your belly button into your spine; tighten your obliques.  Stabilize your core and you'll stabilize your whole body and you will start to pull off these moves.  You'll be sore in strange new places the next day, but that's a sign that you're working the right way.

Now get out there and fall off that ball!