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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Aging often brings a decline in balance and more fragile bones, leading to potentially debilitating or even fatal falls.

Osteoporosis is characterized by the loss of calcium and bone tissue in the bones, which makes them susceptible to fracturing (breaking). If not prevented or if left untreated, osteoporosis can progress painlessly until a bone breaks. Fractures typically occur in the hip, spine and wrist, though any bone can be affected. Hip and spinal fractures are of special concern; hip fractures almost always require hospitalization and major surgery, and can permanently limit a person's ability to walk unassisted. Unfortunately, a simple fall that results in a fractured hip all too often causes prolonged or permanent disability, and even death. Spinal or vertebral fractures also have serious consequences, including loss of height, severe back pain and deformity that can further limit mobility, independence and a person's ability to perform daily activities as well as the activities that could limit further risk. While women are four times more likely than men to develop the disease, men also suffer from osteoporosis. While bone loss is affected by diet and hormonal balance, a sedentary lifestyle, poor posture, poor balance and weak muscles increase the risk of falls and fractures.

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.

Aqua-fitness classes, or water aerobic, provide cardiovascular conditioning and whole-body muscle toning.

A great option for people who like water, but dislike doing laps, and who like class settings, but cannot withstand the high-impact aerobic classes. Water aerobics adds the fluid resistance of water to movements you would perform in daily activities, such as walking, or in on-land athletic training, such as jumping. It is, therefore, functional training that is very useful for building lower body strength. Enroll in a class, or perform some basic moves on your own: start in water that comes to about the bottom of your ribcage, and jog around the pool, incorporating kicks, jumping jacks, strides and knee lifts. Once you are warmed up, gently stretch your leg, hip and lower back muscles. Then, again job around the pool and perform your jumps and strides more quickly, exaggerating the movements. To mix things up a bit, try a tuck jump: from a standing position with your knees and ankles together, pull your knees to you chest. Or, perform a frog jump: begin with your toes, knees and thighs slightly turned out. Bend your arms in a diamond shape, with your fists close to your chest. Push your arms down to your hips while lifting your legs up and into a diamond shape. Then, return to the starting position.