late

Don't waste your time with Bosu balls. They don't help your core.

https://www.healthhabits.ca/2009/10/2...-and-the-bosu/

Boozerguyzer

They can still provide an unstable surface to stand on if you're trying to improve your balance and finite muscles around the ankle. I do love though how people will put some claim involving "YORE CORE GETS STRONGER FROM DIS OK" and people just eat it up. If you want a stronger core do yoga, squats, etc. This is not the Bosu ball's best use but that doesn't mean its pure crap. I've struggled with balance for a while and standing on a bosu ball and catching things thrown at me has helped a lot. Just my $.02

sjvcycler

Bosu balls are awesome for balance, lower leg and ankle strength. I used this in PT and it helped so much!

travelmama

Yes.

tadawdy

Bosu as the best tool for strength and power development? No way. Same for doing most exercises while standing on one (though the link does seem to note significant differences in the curl and overhead movements).

One good exercise with a Bosu, though, is to do a plank, with your hands on the flat surface (dome down), and slowly rock the Bosu side-to-side, or roll around in a circle. A further progression of a plank.

DataJunkie

I have not a clue about bosu balls but one legged Romanian dead lifts while standing on a pillow has helped my balance. The cost is basically nothing since I use an old pillow.

rmr1923

i used something similar in high school to strengthen my ankles when i played football. i had a tendency to get ankle sprains and after a couple months of exercises on this thing in the off-season, i went the next season (playing RB) without a single sprain.

tadawdy

Rehabbing/preventing chronic ankle sprains (owing to poor neuromuscular control) is a validated use of unstable surface training. It's just that fads work in a way that makes everyone want to do everything with a new piece of equipment.

koffee brown

That video certainly wasn't a trainer working with a client. Anyone that trains someone on a bosu or off a bosu like that looks a fool.



How were these people trained? How were they recruited? What were the circumstances in which they were trained? Who trained them? How long were they training? Where the groups trained equally across the board? How did they work with the control group, and for the bosu group, what was the purpose of the control group? Man, I could think of ten other questions about the validity of the study itself. I don't get it.



Dunno- I have too many questions about the validity of the claims made- and not to be a total snob, but Eastern Illinois University? It ain't Harvard. It's not even Illinois State. You might as well say they went to Prairie State College in Chicago Heights, Illinois. Sorry.



As far as core training, bosu is not the way to exclusively train your core. There are other methods. Smart folks will use a multitude of ways to train the core. I don't think any self-respecting trainer is going to claim that bosu is the greatest way to train the core. I've seen folks train their clients to be able to kneel on a stability ball. It seems ridiculous to me, but if it helps their clients and it works for them, so be it. Good trainers use bosu balls, body strength, stability balls, and any other equipment (i.e. pilates mat and reformer exercises) for core training. And the results of that study (which is still full of several scientific bias) doesn't show there is NO core training benefit- just less than they claim for those who didn't use the bosu. The grandiose conclusions are made for dramatic effect. But it's so undramatic that it doesn't even beat the drama of an old crappy episode of Dynasty from television in 1981. Sad.



The saddest thing about this study, if anyone tries to agree with it, is that the author can't even get the study published. If you spend all this time doing a study and write it up and submit it for publication over and over, and no one's publishing it, then you seriously have a problem with your study. Give up.



koffee

bluefoxicy

To a degree that's true, although also missing the point of yoga. It is a moving meditation and you are intended to become more mentally attuned to your physical body while doing it. Most people will lose track of their body in doing yoga; they do not shift themselves into the shape, and instead only push their muscles here or there to form their physical body to it.

Until you can feel and embody the shape you've put your body in, you are doing it wrong. It's a good stretch, occasionally it's a good isometric exercise for a muscle here or there, but it's meant to conjoin the mental to the physical.

koffee brown

+1 to bluefoxicy. Pilates for core training. Yoga for meditation and stretch.

koffee

rmr1923

i want one of those electronic ab belts, you know, the ones that burn fat from JUST your stomach and give you a 6 pack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7r4RrIK5ng


edited to add this wonderful piece of equipment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko5zK...eature=related