The Fitness Ball Standing exercise guide. Here you will learn how to do a Fitness Ball Standing using the correct technique. In this guide, you will find pictures, exercise instructions, and tips on how to get the most out of the exercise, including adaptations and progressions.
Warning: Please read this exercise guide throughout and ensure you can safely perform any progression exercises before attempting.
Exercise Guide
- Difficulty: Expert
- Target Muscles
- Group: Core, Legs
- Muscles: Rectus Abdominus, Erector Spinae, Oblique’s, stabilizer muscles & adductors
- Equipment: Fitness Ball (buy on Amazon) – Sponsored Link
Standing on a Fitness Ball Exercise Guide
This exercise involves standing upon a Fitness Ball and maintaining balance using your core and stabiliser muscles. Standing on a Fitness Ball is an advanced exercise that requires high levels of existing core strength and excellent balance to achieve. As with the Kneeling Balance on Fitness Ball where you kneel upon a Fitness Ball and maintain balance and position. Once you are able to perform this safely it will open up greater possibilities with your training and exercise routines.
Start with Kneeling Balance
Start by performing a Kneeling Balance on Fitness Ball exercise, from this position you need to get your feet up on to the ball. Bring your hands down so that they are controlling the ball just in front of your knees and maintain balance.
Get Up on the Fitness Ball
Now take one foot and place it onto the Fitness Ball, you will be looking to achieve a stance at about hip-width or one a half times hip-width apart. Once you have one foot on the ball, do the same with the other foot so that you are now in a very low squat position on the ball with your hands on the ball for balance. Before going any further make sure you have your feet in the correct position, wider is easier and is easier to control the ball but will require almost constant tension from your adductors.
Push down through your legs to bring yourself up into a standing position on the ball, keep a slight bend in your knees, engage your core and focus on one point to aid balance if needed.
Standing Balance on the Fitness Ball
Now you are standing on your balance, keep core engaged and use your feet and ankles to control the ball if needed and try to keep your centre of balance directly over the centre of the ball.
Warning: This training exercise is a very advanced core stability training method and should only be attempted by those confident in their core stability and can comfortably perform a kneeling balance exercise.
Great! We are up, but what goes up must come down
The safest way to get your feet back onto the ground is to perform this exercise in reverse. There are of course other ways of getting off the ball which most will discover during learning to perform this exercise, however, these are not as safe and should not be executed as a matter of course.
Warning, these methods for dismounting from the Fitness Ball are not classed as safe! Perform at your own risk.
One way is to simply jump-off, but I am not advising this as a safe way to dismount from the Fitness Ball but often when attempting to do this exercise, this is safer than falling off the ball! A more controlled method to dismount is from the standing position, letting the ball roll back so that your feet are in theory coming down the back of the ball and then simply stepping back on to the floor
Top Tips
When learning this exercise, use an under the inflated ball, once you can stand on an underinflated ball, progress to a fully inflated Fitness Ball.
- Keep knees soft when standing
- Engage your core throughout the exercise
- Use a wider stance on Fitness Ball as a progression
- Have a gym partner or a fitness instructor help you