

Ensure your back doesn’t bow, as that will recruit incorrect muscle sequences.Ĭoaching cue: To make it harder, move your feet closer together.Suck your belly button into your spine to maintain core activation.Place your feet on the ball and your hands in a press-up position.Imagine your upper body is fused together. After designated number of reps, swap sides.Ĭoaching cue: Try not to lead with your elbow, but pull from your stomach. Lift your head and shoulders off the ball while rotating the right elbow to the left-hand side of your body.Tuck your chin into your neck and pull your stomach muscles in.Lie on your back with your fingers by your ears.Pull your stomach muscles in and lift your head and shoulders off the ball.Ĭoaching cue: Make it harder by holding your arms straight behind your head.

SWISS BALL CRUNCH FREE
Training mainly on machines may increase your muscle mass or strength, but it will be to the detriment of your stabilisers – ultimately making you weaker on free weight exercises. What is that important? Your body only uses what it needs to when exercising.
SWISS BALL CRUNCH PLUS
Swiss ball exercises, however, enable you to work the prime movers, plus all the stabiliser muscles that support the movement. With a machine and even many free weight exercises, you can only move in one direction and therefore only recruit the main muscle groups. Related: Get fit in 15 with this quick Swiss ball workout Why? Because Swiss balls are an excellent tool for developing functional, ‘real-world’ strength. Initially used by physiotherapists for rehabilitation, they quickly became mainstream. In the late 90s to early 2000s, leisure centres and exercise videos across the world were invaded by very large, bouncy balls. Who knows, you might even own one.īut are these big, bouncy inflatables just a gimmick, or a genuinely useful training tool? Swiss balls are dotted around nearly every gym in the world – usually gathering dust in the corner. Key Points: The Swiss Ball is a better exercise for the abdominals than the seated ab machine.These Swiss ball exercises will work your abs from every angle and help you build functional ‘real-world’ strength… In contrast, the flexed hip position during the seated crunch in machine resulted in higher rectus femoris (quads) activation as compared to the Swiss ball crunch.

The researchers found that sitting crunches in an exercise machine designed to isolate the abdominal muscles does not target the abdominals to the same extent as the supine crunch on the Swiss ball although both exercises caused high activation of the abs. The researchers hooked electrodes all over the stomach of the subjects to measure the abdominal activation. Researchers wanted to compare the abdominal during abdominal crunches performed on a Swiss ball with added elastic resistance and an abdominal training machine. Both Swiss ball and machine crunches work the abdominals, but what works the best? Swiss Ball Crunches Swiss ball training is therefore only recommended as a low threshold modality to improve joint position, posture, balance, and neural feedback. The Swiss ball crunch is an abdominal exercise that has been widely used in both rehabilitation and clinical settings for balance and stability. Many trainers don’t know this but the abdominal crunches performed on an exercise machine, in a seated position may not be desirable for individuals with lumbar disk pathologies, low back pain, or weak abdominal musculature due to high rectus femoris (thigh muscle) activity that’s involved when you have to bring your legs forward. The seated ab crunch machine is a common exercise machine that many people use to activate the abdominals. You should be looking for the exercises that cause the greatest amount of activation during a movement or much like a person using the wrong tools to cut down a tree you’re going to be wasting lots of time and energy. When a lifter goes to the gym, they have to use the right tools to get the most effective results. If you had to cut down a tree, would you use a baseball bat to cut it down? Of course not, a baseball bat will cause damage to the tree by causes huge dents, but it’s not going to cut a tree down with an ax.
