Hey everybody, it's Doctor Jo. It's product review time again. The folks at King Athletic
sent me their fitness ball. So let's get started.
This fitness ball is nice, from King Athletic, because on the back, they actually have some exercises you can do with the ball.
They're a little bit advanced, so I wouldn't recommend starting off with these the first
time you do it if you haven't worked with a fitness ball, or swiss ball, before. I'll
show you some more basic stuff once we get going. It also comes with a pump, which is
really nice because sometimes if you don't have one and you're just blowing it up by
yourself it takes a really, really long time to get it going. It also is really nice because
it has this thick, thick casing which is called anti-burst. When they first started coming
out with the fitness balls, and the swiss balls, they were a little thin and if you
sat on them or kind of bounced on them a little bit, sometimes they would pop, and especially
if you're rehabbing with something that's kind of scary because you don't want to end
up landing on the ground and hurting something else. So, I'm gonna get going and pump this
thing up. These are the pins you put in the hole after everything's filled up, to make
sure that it doesn't come back out. Let's see if I can do this in super warp speed!
And when you're pumping, what you want to do is you want it to be pretty
firm. If you need a different hight, like if you need a little bit less height, you
can leave it a little bit with the air out. So you can go down further, but you want it
to be pretty firm cause that's gonna make you work harder with the stability. If you
feel really off balance, you can take some air out of it and then it won't be quite as
hard to sit on. Think that's probably gonna be good enough. Now the tricky part is to
get this out, and get one of the pins put in so the air doesn't come out. What I like
to do is actually put my finger over it, and then do a little quick push in. Make sure
it's nice and all the way in so it doesn't pop out on you. And then you flip it over,
and there you see. Nice. You can push in a little bit, but it's pretty firm. Now I'm
gonna show you come exercises. When you're sitting on a fitness ball, you want your knees
and your hips to be at about a 90 degree angle. So you don't want to be up high and you don't
want to be crouched low. Pretty much 90 here and 90 here. What that does is it gives you
a good sitting posture because that's how you want to be. And that's gonna help work
your core. If you're slouched down, then you're not working your core. So what I like to do
is work the hips a little bit to warm everything up in the core. Now a fitness ball, or swiss
ball, some people call them a therapy ball, is great for back exercises, core exercises,
balance and stability in general. So you might see them with yoga and Pilates. So what I
like to do is start with my feet abut shoulder width apart and that gives me some balance.
And then just work my hips. We call it a pelvic tilt. So you're just gonna kind of roll back
and come up. But your upper body is pretty much staying in one spot. So you're just working
the hips from front to back. So it's kind of an embarrassing movement if you're doing
it in the gym, but it's really working those core and pelvic muscles. Then you can do a
little side to side shift, or as some people like to call it the Shakira. A little "the
hips don't lie." But that's again just loosening everything up, working it, you can do about
10, 2-3 sets. But when you're first starting off with these fitness balls, you don't want
to do a whole lot cause it might not feel like you're doing a lot, but you're doing
a lot more than you think you are. So to finish off, now I'm gonna do some balance with the
stability exercises. So I'm actually gonna bring my foot up this time and I have to use
my core muscles to balance on the ball so I don't fall off. So if feel very unsteady,
you might want to start off putting the ball against the wall so you don't end up falling
off. But just bring your knee up. You don't have to crank it up, but go slow cause that's
what's gonna make you work hard. So just bringing it up and then coming back down. If you want
to hold on to the ball you can. That will give you a little more balance. Or you can
just kind of place your hands in your lap. Slowly come back down. Try not to lean a whole
lot when you're coming up to one side. You really want your upper body to stay as much
in one spot as you can. So again, these are some simple, just basic exercises to start
off. Kind of getting you used to the fitness ball. Getting you used to the stability of
it and how it throws you off a little bit. There are some more advanced exercises that
you can do. If you're interested in some of those, you can go to AskDoctorJo.com check
out some more of those. If you're interested in checking out some more King Athletic products,
go to KingAthletic.com If you're interested in purchasing the fitness ball, go to our
product store at AskDoctorJo.com/products. And remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope
you feel better soon.