Whether you are looking to decrease your weight or increase your fitness, or indeed both, it is essential that you find the right workout for you. Whilst exercise of any kind will do wonders for your wellness and wellbeing in a general sense, to really get into shape you want to make sure that you are targeting your routine towards the areas of your physique that you really want to tone up – and to do this you have to use the right equipment.
You’ve probably seen the big, inflatable gym balls rolling around the place and wondered what on earth they could possibly contribute to your fitness. Well, the answer is – a lot. Using one of these special gym balls to help you work out can increase your fitness and tone up your body in all kinds of amazing ways.
For a start, when you are balancing on a ball you have to engage all kinds of muscles other than the ones you are using. So, to use situps as an example, when you are doing situps on a ball rather than on the ground you are not only exercising the muscles that are involved in doing a situp, you are also exercising a whole lot of other core muscles to keep you from falling off the ball at the same time!
One exercise that you can do using a smaller gym ball is something called a star reach, where you place the ball on the ground next to you and then you lean over completely to one side, placing your hand on the ball. You then lift the opposite leg off the ground and throw out the opposite hand in a star shape. This is great for toning up the legs.
You can also try grasping the ball between the top of one calf and the hand on the same side and then doing a ‘v sit’ where you balance on your bottom with your legs in the air, and use your core muscles to keep the ball on your leg.
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