Build Strength and Balance in Your Upper Back with an Exercise Ball

You can use an exercise ball for a variation of chest flies. Drape your body across the top of the ball. Extend your legs, keeping the balls of your feet on the floor, and keep your stomach on the ball. Hold a small, weighted ball or a soup can in each hand and extend your arms perpendicular to your body. Raise and lower your arms about two inches and repeat 15 times.

A Balance Exercise That Targets Your Abs

Editors at Fitness Magazine say this is one of many good balance exercises using a stability ball. This is an exercise to improve balance that also targets your abs. Here is how to do it: (work up to three sets).

1. Stand with feet together about a foot behind a stability ball.

2. Bend from the hips, placing hands on ball.

3. Keeping torso extended and abs and glutes tight, raise left leg behind you until it's parallel to the floor.

4. Keep your foot flexed and your inner thigh facing the floor.

5. Rotate your torso to the left and extend left arm overhead.

6. Turn head to gaze at left hand.

7. Hold for three counts.

8. Lower and return to starting position.

Repeat on opposite leg.

Athletes Take Note: Exercise balls Can Help Loosen Tight Hips

Many serious athletes, and runners in particular, suffer from tight hips, and a fitness ball exercise can help. Sit on the ball with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Slowly rotate your hips clockwise 3 to 5 times, then reverse. Breathe deeply and concentrate on releasing tightness in the hips and lower back. Repeat as needed.

Start in a seated base position. Slowly circle your hips clockwise three to five times; reverse, circling counterclockwise. Focus on releasing tension in the hips and lower back.

Sports Specific Training

Balance training on a BOSU Ball improved postural control and sport-related activities in a recent study. The BOSU Ball is a unique device. Although it is like half a ball, you can do exercises on it that you wouldn't do on other devices. Athletes and coaches devise sports specific exercises, and fitness enthusiasts use it for a variety of balance and agility exercises.

Core Strength Exercise #1: Back extension using the Swiss Ball

Lie face down on a Swiss ball, making sure that the ball is securely under your hips and lower torso. Your toes (or knees, for beginners) should be on the floor, and your hands should be behind your head (though be sure you do not pull your head forward – you could strain your neck). Slowly roll down the ball, lifting your chest off the ball and bringing your shoulders up until your body is in a straight line. Make sure your body is in alignment (that is, be sure your head, neck, shoulders and back form a straight line), your abs are pulled in, and that you are breathing continuously. Repeat ten to twelve times.

Balance training can both limit one's risk of injury and play a fundamental role in rehabilitation.

Balance training starts simply with the proper stance. Pay careful attention to forming a good arch in your foot without bending your toes. This can be harder than it sounds! To achieve the arch, soften your knees and then turn them out without moving your feet; this should naturally lift the arch of your foot. Once you have mastered the correct, arched-foot stance, you can begin incorporating balance exercises into your routine. These exercises proceed from sitting to standing positions and from unstable to stable surfaces. Maintain the slightly arched foot stance throughout the exercises, except where you are explicitly instructed to alter your stance.

Use a ball as a chair.

The exercise ball, or Swiss ball, is a dynamic tool that can provide many health benefits when used as a chair. Envision your basic office chair as a cast, or a brace: it keeps your body static, so your core muscles – which are the basis for your posture - become weakened. Moreover, this static sitting position does not allow you to maintain a good relationship with gravity, so that your body “sinks” over time, causing you to slouch and sit in awkward positions to relieve the pressure on your spine. The ball as chair, though, is an active surface, and sitting actively leads to improved posture, core strength and body awareness. The dynamic motions created by sitting on a ball helps relieve the pressure of gravity, and the freedom of movement afforded by sitting on a ball allows your spine to find its optimal posture. You'll make minute adjustments to your position while you sit on the ball, and these help improve circulation, which helps keep inter-vertebral discs healthy. Moreover, the instability of the ball and the lack of a backrest encourage the use of stabilizer muscles in our core, and increased core strength translates to better posture.