Video:How to Tone the Lower Body With an Exercise Ball
with Vionna JonesIn this video a personal trainer demonstrates exercises to tone the lower body with an exercise ball rather than doing floor exercises or using a machine. See these tips for how to tone the lower body with an exercise ball at home.
Transcript:How to Tone the Lower Body With an Exercise Ball
Hi, I'm Vionna Jones with Fit in DC. Today for About.comTone the Lower Body With an Exercise Ball
I'm going to show you how to strengthen your lower body using the Stability Ball. The stability ball also called a Balance ball or a Swiss ball is really good to use when you're strengthening the lower body because it forces you to engage your abdominal muscles while working on your lower body exercises. Our first exercise is called a Ball Squat. It targets the quads and the glutes.Ball Squat to Tone the Lower Body
You want to start standing with your stability ball behind your lower back. Then with your abs engaged, you're going to walk the feet out and they're going to be slightly wider than your hips. Bring the shoulder blades back and down and the abs engaged they help keep the chest lifted. You can hold weights at your side or you can just have your arms at your side. You'll bend your knee and your tailbone curls underneath the ball then when you push up you push up through the heels to come right back to standing. So your knees are going to stay right over top of your heels here and you can perform 12 to 15 repetitions of this exercise in two or three sets.Hamstring Curl to Tone the Lower Body
The next exercise targets the Hamstring. It's called a Hamstring Curl. You want to start on your back, on your mat with your heels on top of your ball. Engage the abs first and then lift the hips off the mat. The hips are going to stay here through your entire set. You're going to bring the heels in towards your body and then push them right back up. So the heels come in as close to the body as you can get them and then push them out. We'll do 12 to 15 of these and then after your last repetition, you can lower back down to the mat. You can do two to three sets of this exercise as well.And those are just a few exercises that you can do to tone your lower body using the stability ball. To learn more visit About.com.
