Swiss ball, also known as yoga ball or stability ball, is one of the exercise equipments that are rising in popularity. Today we'll take a deeper look at why Swiss ball is something that we shouldn't be missing out.
Some history about Swiss ball
The term “Swiss balls” became well known through US therapists who first witnessed the balls being used in Physical Therapy clinics in Switzerland.“Gymnic balls”, the original name, were in fact invented by Mr. Aquilino Cosani, an Italian toy manufacturer in 1963. The balls were mostly used in hospitals and clinics in Europe. The first one who used the balls for orthopedic and other medical issues for adults was Dr. Klein-Vogelbach, the developer of the Functional Kinetics theory of movement. She later on presented Swiss ball exercises at the World Physical Therapy Congress in Amsterdam in 1970.
Swiss balls were predominantly utilized for therapy purposes until they were introduced to the fitness industry the last decade. Elite strength coaches started to integrate Swiss ball training into a professional sports training program in the beginning. Swiss balls now are widely used for functional, high performance training, and rehabilitation.
Benefits
1 - Improve posture
Our muscles are divided into two categories –– tonic muscles and phasic muscles. Tonic muscles are stabilizers which are responsible for holding our postures upright and providing us stabilization. Phasic muscles are prime movers which are responsible for dynamic movements and gross stability. Phasic muscles’ responsiveness to fatigue is very quick while tonic muscles’ is relatively slower. Therefore, people tend to avoid using their phasic/movement muscles while overworking their tonic/postural muscles for dynamic movements. This leads to a common issue –– shortening and tightening of tonic muscles with lengthening and weakening of phasic muscles.
When we exercise using Swiss balls, its inherent mobility forces us to activate our weak postural/tonic muscles that are not required with machine exercises. Training the postural muscles is important to gain and to maintain proper postures for daily functions.
2 - Improve balance/stability
As you know, Swiss balls are round. That means it moves very easily when properly inflated. If we want to perform any exercises with the ball, all our stabilizers and neutralizers are required to turn on in order to maintain balance. For instance, when we are kneeling on a Swiss ball, all our joints need to be stabilized in all planes of motion immediately. Otherwise, our center of gravity will leave the base of support and we will eventually fall.
The more unstable your training environment, the more activation you get from your joint stabilizers and joint neutralizers.
Improving our joint stability, our prime movers/phasic muscles are going to get recruited more efficiently as well. This leads to improved sports performance because we are able to apply for strength, power, or balance in any given circumstances. Swiss ball training will be extremely beneficial for surfers, ice-skaters, and skateboarders.
3 - Strengthen core and extremities
Proper recruitment of core musculature is extremely crucial for all of us. But it doesn’t happen with machine training or supported free weight training. Swiss ball, on the other hand, requiring us to use our own body weight without any stable support, or adding other forms of resistances, can not only effectively strengthen our core and back musculatures, but also an easy tool to nicely tone our body.
4 - Effective rehabilitative tool
Most people experience lost of inhibition of their reflexes after surgeries due to pain, nerve damage, or lack of activity. Therefore, they can no longer properly recruit certain muscles in order to avoid pain and injuries. We call this sensory-motor amnesia.
Swiss ball training will be excellent for re-activating these dormant muscles. When our body is placed under an unstable environment, our brain considers it as a threat. In order to protect ourselves from a threat, our nervous system usually activates our stabilizers which have been inactive or dysfunctional. Therefore, Swiss ball is an excellent tool to retrain clients who have lost their connections with their injured/hurt muscles.
5 - Nervous system activation
The more muscles required to activate, the more demanding it is to our nervous system. Training on a Swiss ball significantly increases the activation of our nervous system because more muscles are used during an exercises. For instance, static lunge on ground mainly targets our quads and glutes. When we progress it to a single leg lunge on Swiss ball, muscles that are being used include core, arms, hip flexors, basically our whole body! Each of these muscles draw energy from the nervous system and thus it will fatigue sooner. Training our nervous system improves our ability to handle more psychological loads while will help us think and do better in daily lives.
6 - Avoid fixed patterns
When someone is injured from a repetitive movement pattern, it is best that he/she avoids training the same pattern during rehabilitation phase. Swiss ball is a great tool to avoid fixed patterns. We can perform exercises in a variety of positions: sitting, standing, supine, prone, kneeling, and side leaning. This allows therapists to have a wide range of exercise selections with Swiss ball when conditioning clients without fortifying faulty movement patterns.
7 - Reflex training
While anchored equipment and machines train our righting reflexes, Swiss ball is an excellent tool for targeting our tilting reflexes due to its unstable base of support.
Tilting reflexes, also known as equilibrium reflexes, are used to keep our body upright and stable when above a moving surface. Righting reflexes are used to keep our body upright anytime we move across a stable object.
By increasing the speed of righting and tilting reflexes, you can reduce the chance of injury.
8 - Cost effective and convenient
Swiss ball is extremely affordable and convenient. We can perform more than 100 exercises with only ONE Swiss ball! We can perform almost all exercises we do with machines or free weights with a Swiss ball. If budget is your concern, problem solved! You will only need one ball to create a full killer workout program.
If you are someone who travels very often and always goes through hassles looking for a hotel with a gym so that you can squeeze in some exercises, problem solved! You can deflate and pack a Swiss ball into your luggage and go anywhere anytime.
Free 60-minute Consultation & Assessments
There’s so much more I can share with you all about why Swiss ball is a game changer. If you are curious about how we design our coaching programs integrating Swiss ball exercises and how they are going to benefit yourself or your friends/families, come visit TAO Movement!
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