When Cincinnati personal trainer Missy Hawthorne started learning about balance ball training, she went through seven hours of seminars and never once got bored. Like medicine ball training, its main focus is improving the core, or the trunk, of the body to enable more efficient movement. We usually ignore it until our 70s, and that's when we fall down and break hips. But if people start practicing balance earlier, she says, their bodies will be in good shape for the years to come. Balance components are key for all ages and generations.
People are capable of keeping it interesting with a little bit of imagination.
Not only do balance ball workouts help improve strength, they give people better body awareness. For example, when Hawthorne instructed me to do a set of crunches with my back on the ball, my first two or three made the ball wobble. I did, which made the ball motionless, and consequently, tightened up my abdominal muscles, making the motion much more controlled. The unstable surface is the constant, but people can progress to the next level of training for a seemingly infinite amount of time. Hawthorne says she hasn't seen the program yet, but has heard nothing but good things about it.