300 backwards jump ropes
Complete 5 mins of continuous work in of each of the following:
Swiss ball balance drill (seated)
Swiss ball balance drill (knees on)
uni stab OH press 15/20 (2 1/2 min R, 2 1/2 min L)
uni stab cross-body curls 15/20 (2 1/2 min R, 2 1/2 min L)
uni stab skull crushers 15/20 (2 1/2 min R, 2 1/2 min L)
Extra credit (if you're feeling froggy):
Complete 5 mins of continuous work of over the tops
Post number of rope jumps missed, dabs used on stability drills, and reps completed per side of curls and presses to comments.
What is a "dab?"
A dab is where you momentarily use the floor or any other object to regain balance lost during stability work.
This is a ______ (please pick one - weird, strange, frustrating, cool, unique) workout. It's hard to understand the benefits until you accumulate some time on that ball. No, REAL time. A couple minutes of dinking around with the movements won't cut it. This workout doesn't even begin to showcase itself until after the 10 minute mark. After 10 minutes on the ball, the benefits become more apparent.
What kind of benefits can you gain from balancing atop a stability ball?
There are too many to list, but highlights would be:
Healing benefits (similar to Yoga & Pilates).
Sometimes exercisers make the mistake of believing the only movements of value are those done with large loads - performed over long distances - while moving FAST. Thing is, smaller movements, with lighter loads performed slowly are instrumental in circulating oxygen and nutrients into muscles (and other tissues) while removing waste products from them. These slower/lighter/shallower movements have amazing restorative and regenerative properties. They heal muscles (and other tissues) preparing them more fully to sustain larger, heavier and faster movements later. This intensifies health & fitness on all levels.
Stabilization.
Dynamic contractions (large movements, performed swiftly) are always sported by energy transferring zones that don't make much movement (stabilizers). These stabilizers are critical to your safety and performance. Think about the function of your abdominals while you are performing a dead lift. If you dead lift correctly, your trunk should be locked (stabilized) into place in a position called Neutral Spine. Your abdominals are fully contracted here but aren't (shouldn't be) dynamically moving at all. Dynamically moving your trunk while performing heavy deads can lead to debilitating injury and is not suggested.
Of course, one of the best ways to train these stabilizers is by performing the movements they support (dead lifting here) over and over. However, it isn't practical (or safe, or efficient ) to dead lift every day. We CAN safely & effectively train the stabilizers by other means (like, stability ball drills & etc.). Doing so will help assure more safety, higher performance and more efficiency when performing more dynamic movements in the future.
Balance
Increasing your balance is one of the fastest, most effective ways of improving health, fitness and performance. Balance is an aspect of fitness that is involved in every movement you perform throughout the activities of your daily life.
We treasure a robust, fully functional fitness at GPP. The real value of our programming is in our multifaceted approach to complete fitness benefits.
Apparently sweat angels occur in Vietnam the same as they do at GPP! Nice one Troy!