Shelly McDonald: Hi I am Shelly McDonald on watchmojo.com and I am about to show you some exercises with the Bosu Balance Trainer. We are going to do some upper body, some core and some lower body training today.
The first exercise I am going to show you is the basic squat. Foot positioning is really key on the Bosu. You want to think about centering yourself by putting your in-step around the second ring of the Bosu and try to keep your feet as flat as possible, although, if you feel like you are loosing your balance, it helps to push your toes a little forward. Shoulders down, long neck to keep that neutral spine and then you just kind of squat and you can progress to going a little bit lower and then the great thing about the Bosu is that you can turn it over to make it even better challenge. So how I like to get up on this thing is step in the middle and then come up really quickly and then you slide your feet out so that they are about hip distance apart and then you try to level out. Now sometimes, this is going to happen, that's normal and then it's just a squat and eventually it will get so that you don't get too much wobble at all. Then to get off, you lean, cross over.
So the next exercise is the abdominal curl, abdominal crunch, sit out, which ever one, you are calling it and there is a way to progress with this one, but first and foremost what you want to remember to do is called abdominal bracing and it's relatively new in fitness industry to be discussing it, but it has to do stabilizing the spine before you start moving it and it's really to protect the back. So what it is, it's firing up this muscle that runs across here, the transverse abdominis and basically, you just have to give it a mild little squeeze and then hold it like that while you are doing your sit-outs. So we are going to trying to remember that when we are doing it. Now, first position is bring your hips lower to the ground, abdominal brace and then just back and lift. Now, you will notice there is no hip movement. Common mistake in people is they start to rock. This is a lot of momentum and actually deactivates a lot of the ab muscles and then as you get a little bit better, you come up a little higher, again abdominal brace, chin back and your hands come to here then you are very much isolating those abdominal muscles and then you can progress to a bigger liver by opening up those arms above the head and doing it that way and that's your abdominal curl.
Okay, so, now we are going to do a push-up. Basically, you can grab the Bosu by the edges if it's a little easier or you can just simply place your hands on the Bosu. Now for a little bit easier positioning, hands, grab the side and make sure that when you are going your push-up, your elbows stay behind you because a common mistake is the elbow is right up and that can cause shoulder impingement. So, just like a push-up, you want to pivot around the knee joint and then as you feel like you are getting a little stronger, you can bring those hands in and come up on the toes and then when you really feel like you want to challenge, you lift that foot out, voila, the push-up.
Okay, so a great exercise for core stability and lower back training is called the opposite on leg raise. So you want to start, hands on the floor, so you have a little bit of stable surface and your knees up on the Bosu, about hip distance apart and then start with the leg coming up first and then the arm and then breathe in and then switch. The idea is to hold that neutral spine which means holding your back in a way that it would be if you were standing. Then you progress to this, coming right up on the Bosu, both hands and feet and then stretching out. Try to do as many as you can well until your fatigued and feel you had enough.
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