THE SWISS BALL CAN BE A GREAT ADDITION TO YOUR GYM PROGRAMME, WORKING CORE MUSCLES THAT MAY HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY UNUSED. BUT REMEMBER TO VARY YOUR WORK-OUT, OR YOU MAY END UP WEAKER IN THE LONG RUN…

When you walk in to a modern gym today, you may end up a little bit confused. You may be going there to perform your workout, while other gym members are thinking it’s an open audition for Cirque du Soleil.

Circus acts on Swiss training balls are becoming a frequent sight in gyms. Yet poorly-designed exercise programs are recipes for an orthopaedic disaster. Some people like to be different and to be noticed. You can wear your underwear outside your jeans, but you must consider two things. Is it more effective and is it more fun?

Exercises are prescriptions for health and therefore each exercise must have an end goal in mind if you are to achieve success. If not, ask yourself why you are performing it.  The term ‘Swiss ball’ was popularised by US therapists who first saw the balls being used in rehabilitation clinics in Switzerland. During the last decade, the fitness balls have been brought into the fitness industry and targeted at athletes.

Exercise kinesiologist Paul Chek lists the benefits as improved posture, balance and stability, nervous system activation, and strengthening your core. It is still an effective rehabilitation tool, too. Due to the unstable surface of a ball, it activates muscles that help stabilise joints that may have been previously unused.

The Swiss balls are valuable training tools, but depending on them too heavily will probably be counterproductive in the long run.  Generally, the balls will cause you to control your movements and eliminate sloppy form. It does this because if you do not perform the exercise correctly, you will end up rolling away.

The reason for using the Swiss ball to do dumbell presses is that the instability of the ball will force you to recruit your stabilisers extensively, thus allowing you to build a more injury-resistant shoulder structure and to recruit more muscles.  Also, the round surface allows you to lower the dumbells over a greater range, thus providing a much better stretch for the chest muscles. The Swiss ball chest press is a good exercise if the stabilisers of your shoulder are preventing your progress; but if you stay on this exercise for too many workouts it will prevent the main muscles of the exercise (chest, shoulders and triceps) from getting stronger.

In rehabilitation, the Swiss ball is beneficial to post-surgical patients who have had spinal surgery. It activates muscles that may have been switched off due to pain or surgery.  What’s more, when you are horizontal, the pressure on the spinal discs is as low as 25-35pc of what it is when you are standing.  It is also beneficial as a chair in the office as you can continually pump fluid into your discs through movement, keeping your spine in alignment, whereas common chairs will lead to slouching.

The Swiss ball has its uses but if you rely on them too heavily, experienced strength coaches like Charles Poliquin will tell you that the users will eventually become weak in the upper body.  In addition to this, your ability to perform explosive movements like jumping will suffer. This is because movements on a Swiss ball require controlled movements for safety reasons.

Integrate it with other gym tools and limit the number of Swiss ball exercises at the end of your workout to two.