Great Moves On An Exercise Ball

As you go about your workout program, one piece of equipment that you should be sure you’re adding into the mix is an exercise ball. Exercise balls are not only perfect for those doing home workouts since they’re so cost effective and easy to store, but they’re going to challenge your muscles in a whole new way.

Many people often make the mistake of thinking that they can only do ab exercises on an exercise ball, but this isn’t the case at all. It’s very easy to move some of your usual standard weight lifting movements onto these so you can derive even better benefits from the activity.

Let’s have a quick peak into some of the top moves to perform on an exercise ball.

Push-Ups On The Ball

If you want a fast way to engage the core muscles while really hitting the chest muscles hard, doing some push-ups on an exercise ball is a perfect way to go about achieving that.

Simply place both hands on top of an exercise ball with the feet firmly on the floor and perform the push-up from there.

There’s no question that this adds a whole new element of intensity to the standard push-up exercise.

Plank On The Ball

If you’re a big fan of the traditional plank movement for targeting the core, you should also consider moving this one over to the exercise ball as well.

By placing either the hands or the feet up on an exercise ball as you go about this movement you’re going to force the ab muscles to work harder since now they have a reduced base of support.

If you want to make things slightly easier, place the feet up on top of the ball, while if you place the hands up, it’s going to be much more challenging.

Lateral Raises On The Ball

Moving on, one traditional exercise that you should consider moving to the exercise ball is your lateral raises. If you can do single arm lateral raises rather than double arm lateral raises, this will be even better.

This is due to the fact that with only one arm out to the side of the body, you’ll really create a large degree of imbalance, causing the abs and the shoulders to work that much harder.

Just be sure to perform both sides equally to prevent any muscular imbalance from developing.

Hip Raises On The Ball

Finally, if you want to target the hamstrings and don’t have access to a leg curl machine, performing some hip raises on the ball is the perfect alternative.

For this one you simply place the feet up on the ball and then lift the hips up off the ground.

With the knees straight and once you’ve found your balance, slowly bend at the knees and roll the ball into the body to complete the rep. Once there, pause and then roll back out again.

So make sure you’re not overlook all that this piece of fitness equipment has to offer. Exercise balls are for more than just strengthening the abs and with these movements you can enhance the strength of many muscles in the body.