Roll into fitness, like a baby
In youth, we move in many ways, with ease and flow. Each decade, we tighten up from injuries, stress, and stagnant posturing. Ball mobility and fitness flows can help you discover your body again.
Lying on a stability ball can help you sense your breath, your abdominals, and the primal contact your hands and feet made with the ground as a baby. The contact of the big toe, the GREAT TOE, planted via the ball of the foot, helps you turn on your glutes, spine, and propulsion forward.
Gently rocking forward and back can wake up sleepy reflexes and turn on deep postural stabilizers, including scapular muscles, spinal extensors, pelvic floor, and the hip rotators. You can try out balls at your local gym and begin re-training your body in new ways, and enhancing your power and flow in movements. Moving slowly, or fast, and holding poses that tire you out all have benefits, stability, agility, speed, and endurance. I often start my lumbar, pelvic, and hip clients with the stability ball to add FUN to movement.
You may be shocked to find super-tight/stiff areas of your body, such as the ribs, when attempting to lie belly down on a ball. Choosing the right diameter size ball, as well as the inflation level (firm, medium, or soft/a little deflated), can influence your comfort and also the ability to reach the floor without feeling like a dead bug or droopy spider. Ball fitness helped me rehab my core postpartum, and now it is both a pilates plus power workout as well as a decompression, restorative format, depending on the sequences I apply.
Here is a guide for choosing the best size ball for yourself, based on your height:
Height Ball Diameter
4’6” to 4”10 45 cm
4’ 11 to 5’4 55 cm
5’5” to 5’11 65 cm
6’ to 6’5 75 cm
6’6 and above 85 cm
You can warm up with the ball moves here, and then progress to half kneeling, to standing, mini squats, and dynamic side steps to play around with mobility. The entire core is working to move from kneeling to standing and side-stepping, and often one side is easy, and the other may feel less secure.
Look to my YouTube (@maureenmason6385) Movement Foundations for a few more mobility explorations for fun, and discovery of your weak and strong links, and keep on moving, motion is lotion.
Pelvic Rehabilitation: The Manual Therapy and Exercise Guide Across the Lifespan has therapeutic exercises displayed for all ages and abilities, from pediatrics to seniors, for your use for yourself or those you may guide or treat.
