Although there is really no such thing as the “upper” and “lower” abdominal area, there are certain exercises where you will feel the burn in one area more than the other, which is what makes the air bicycle movement so effective. By keeping your shoulders elevated, you are tightening up the part of  your abs that are closest to your chest while at the same time moving your legs which targets the hip flexors and the lower abdominal area.

The keys to this movement are:

• Don’t stop until you feel the burn, and even then try to go for more reps
• Support your head with your hands, but do not pull on your head
• Bring your knees up as far as you can on each repetition
• Focus on every repetition rather than just getting into a “groove” of back and forth movements

Air Bicycle Abdominal Exercise

For an incredibly effective abdominal training routine, be sure to check out the Ab Ripper X portion of the P90X Extreme Home Training Program.

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Forward Ball Roll

The basic idea behind this exercise is to control your decent as you push the exercise ball forward, and then also control pushing yourself back up into the starting position. Your natural inclination will be to bend over at the waist in order to accomplish the movement, but doing so will almost completely retard the effectiveness of this exercise.

During the entire exercise, your body should be in a straight line from your knees all the way up to your shoulders. It is in keeping that straight line where the benefit of this exercise becomes clear.

As you move forward and then backward on the ball, you will need to forcefully contract your abdominal muscles as well as the muscles of your lower back in order to keep your body in a straight line. Consistently practicing the proper execution of the forward ball roll will build up the strength of your core musculature, and it will also radically increase your level of neuromuscular coordination, particularly with regard to the muscles in your back and abdominal area.

Related Information:

Ask the Experts: Exercise Ball Exercises
Workout Resources: Exercise Ball Exercises

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The Pike

The graphic shown here does a great job of depicting how The Pike is done. However, I recommend taking the range of motion even further. Work yourself up to the point where you can bring your toes up onto the ball and bring your legs very close to your upper body. When done at the maximum range of motion, it will almost look like you are bent completely in half!

As with all exercise ball exercises, controlling the movement is one of the keys to getting the most out of it. Related Downloads:
Upper Body Exercises
Fitness Programs
Abdominal ExercisesYou can't just throw your bodyweight around and expect to get a lot of out this movement. However, by focusing intently on a full and proper range of motion, you will get a great overall body workout, and you will also keep your heart rate up!

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

Ask the Experts: Exercise Ball Exercises
Workout Resources: Exercise Ball Exercises

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Elevated Push Ups on Exercise Ball

To get into position for this exercise, bring the exercise ball close to the box, table, chair or other elevated surface, put your knees on the surface, your hands on the exercise ball, and then slowly roll yourself out until your toes are bracing your lower body, and your hands are shoulder width apart on the exercise ball.

Related Downloads:
Upper Body Exercises
Fitness Programs
Bodyweight Exercises
Abdominal ExercisesSlowly lower your upper body down until your upper arms are roughly parallel to the ground, then push yourself back up into the starting position. Do as many repetitions as you can do safely and correctly, and then drop one leg, then the other, down off of the elevated surface to complete the exercise.

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

Ask the Experts: Exercise Ball Exercises

Workout Resources: Exercise Ball Exercises

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Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

For a complete list of exercise ball workouts, be sure to visit FitnessBallU.com!

Crunches on an Exercise Ball

When doing crunches on the exercise ball, be sure that your lower back is the only thing in contact with the ball! The whole idea here is to increase the range of motion of the crunch movement, and if your shoulders are on the ball, you will not get very much additional benefit over just doing standard floor crunches.

Also, just as with a floor crunch, do not pull on your head as you come up. Use your abdominal muscles to lift your upper body off of the ball, and then hold yourself in that elevated position for 1 or 2 full seconds. When you return back to the starting position, do not rest on the ball! Immediately come back up for the next repetition, then continue that pattern for 15 to 30 focused and intense repetitions.

Click here if you want to learn about exercise ball exercises.

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The following list of 7 Simple Tips on How to Workout at Home will help you make the most of your home workouts, thus ensuring the success of your fitness and weight loss efforts!

1) Creating a Space

One of the most important tips about working out at home is that you must have a space that is dedicated to exercising. Ideally that space would be permanent and you would not have to put away your exercise equipment when you were done with it.

However, even if your ability to workout at home hinges on sharing your exercise space with common areas of the house (living room, dining room, basement, etc.), you must have a space that can be used at least part-time for exercising. If you do not have an area where you can easily do your home workouts, then you will end up not doing them, because:

• You won't take your workouts seriously if you are in an area of your house that doesn't "feel" like an exercise area.
• If you have to struggle with finding a place to workout on any given day, then it will become a hassle, and you simply won't do it. 

2) Minimal Equipment

You do not need an excessive amount of exercise equipment in order to do effective home workouts. A good set of dumbbells and an exercise ball are a great place to start, and you can expand from there only if you desire – it is not necessary. There are dumbbell exercises and exercise ball exercises that are radically effective if done properly and consistently.

If you allow yourself to believe that you need a lot of equipment before you can effectively workout at home, then it may not end up happening for 2 reasons:

• You may not have enough room in your home for a large stash of exercise equipment.
• The more exercise equipment you need, the more it will cost you to set up your home workout area.

In addition, although it never hurts to have access to a good treadmill or elliptical trainer, you can also get a great cardiovascular workout by doing plyometric exercises such as jumping jacks and high jumps, or doing circuit-style training that keeps your heart rate elevated for the entire workout.

3) Scheduling a Time

Setting aside a time for working out at home is just as important as setting up a place to workout. For many people it is difficult in the beginning to workout at home because there is no time when they "have to" do it. They think that since they can just get up and go workout whenever they want to that they will just do it later.

"Later" keeps getting pushed further and further back in the day, and before you know it, the entire day has gone by and you still haven't done your workout! Make it a part of your daily routine to exercise, and even put it on your calendar if you need to so that you don't schedule something else during your workout time. 

4) Removing Distractions

It is very easy to get distracted when you are working out at home because you have so many options for what you could be doing at any given moment. Between your own chores or responsibilities and the demands of your family members, neighbors, and even your pets, what started out as a planned workout can quickly become less than productive.

Whatever it is that you could be distracted by, be sure to remove it before you start exercising. That could include anything from turning off your telephone and your TV, to telling the people in and around your house that you are unavailable during your exercise time. It may take a few workouts before the new procedures become a habit for you and everyone else, so be sure to stick it out past the initial confusion. Everything smooths out pretty quickly.

5) Staying Motivated

For some people, it is difficult to be motivated in the home environment. It is not the environment that people generally associate with exercise, and without other people there who are also exercising, it can be easy for your motivation to leak away.

The best way to counter this is to do everything that you can to take your mind out of the home environment. Put on your headphones and rock out while you are exercising, use that time to listen to motivational or empowering audio programs, or even turn on the local health and fitness channel on the television to provide an appropriate backdrop for your exercise session.

6) Toys

A lot of people don't know it, but there are some incredibly fun electronic toys that you can play with at home that will allow you to have some fun while you are exercising!

The EyeToy Kinetic is a total blast and can deliver some amazingly difficult workouts while actually putting yourself inside the game.

Yourself Fitness is another gaming system where your virtual trainer Maya guides you through everything that you are supposed to be doing.  In addition to over 500 exercises, Yourself Fitness also comes with meal planning, over 4,500 recipes, and even shopping lists.

QMotion FunFitness is another system where you actually interact with the environment on your television screen, while playing racing games that you already own. Very cool stuff!

Here are pictures of each of the products listed above:

In addition to the game-related exercise systems listed above, there are also thousands of exercise and fitness DVD's that you can choose from in order to get a great home workout, and most of them require very little exercise equipment.

7) Nutrition

And finally, when working out at home, you have the ability to plan your nutritional intake to get the maximum benefit from your home workout program.

People who workout at a gym tend to either workout on an empty stomach, or wait too long after they workout before they get the calories that the body needs in order to recover properly from their workout.  

Ideally you would ingest some healthy calories one to two hours before exercising, and then again one to two hours after your workout. To find out what type and amount of calories you should be taking in based on your fitness goals, check out Nutrition Generator, which is an in-depth system of both planning and tracking your nutritional intake. 

Related Content:

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
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Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to almost 2,000 exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Ball Exchange

It is very similar to the V Sit-up, which is the exact same movement, only without the ball. The exercise ball adds 2 things to the movement that increase its effectiveness:

1) Neuromuscular Coordination. You simply can't do this exercise properly without coordinating a lot of different muscles all at the same time. See this post for more on the benefits of neuromuscular coordination.

2) Peak Contraction. It is very easy to start getting sloppy when doing these types of movements, especially when you start to get tired. However, by having to physically move the ball from your hands to your feet, and then back again on every repetition, you have no choice but to stay in that peak contracted position for one full second.

Between the use of both ends of the abdominal muscle wall, the increased neuromuscular coordination, and the added advantage of holding that peak contraction, this exercise is voted one of the best when it comes to making true progress in the abdominal area!

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

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I mean, any exercise is better than no exercise, but on that same token, if you are going to take the time to exercise, why not take the time to do it right, so that you get the most benefit out of the time and effort that you expend?

I see 3 things that people consistently do incorrectly, and this post will detail what is being done wrong so that you can do it right!

Improper Inflation 

This is a common problem that keeps being repeated over and over again because most gyms and workout centers don't inflate their exercise balls properly. Unfortunately, people working out who don't know any better think that must be how to do it, so even if they get their own exercise ball, they in turn don't inflate it properly.

The idea behind doing exercises on an exercise ball is that you are using an unstable surface, which makes the exercise more difficult, and causes you to use more of the core stabilization muscles in your abdominal area and also in your back.

If the exercise ball is not inflated enough – which is often the case, then the ball is simply not that difficult to use. By the time you add the bodyweight of the person doing the exercise to an under-inflated ball, it simply flattens out and causes a comfortable – rather than unstable – surface to exercise upon.

The proper inflation of an exercise ball will make the ball fairly firm, even if you are sitting or laying on it. There should be a small amount of "give" when you add your weight to the ball, but not very much.

Improper Body Positioning

Another common mistake that people make when using an exercise ball is that they do not maintain the proper positioning of their body throughout the entire exercise. This has the effect of minimizing the benefit of using the exercise ball.

There is no "one" position that is the right position, because it depends on the exercise that you are doing. However, common incorrect forms include all of the following:

• Allowing your back to "sag" rather than keeping it straight and firm
• Resting your lower back on the exercise ball during upper body exercises when your shoulders should be the only body part touching the ball.
• Putting too much of your bodyweight on the ball during any given movement. The ball is supposed to be an unstable surface that makes the exercise more difficult, not a resting place for your weary body.

Ineffective use of the Core Stabilization Muscles

Again, one of the biggest benefits to using an exercise ball is that you strengthen and tone the core muscles including all of the following:

• The inner and outer abdominal wall
• The oblique, or side-abdominal muscles
• The muscles of the lower back
• The muscles surrounding and supporting your spine

As with all resistance exercise, you should always be keeping a "mind muscle" link with the muscles that are being utilized for that exercise.

In other words, you should be consciously focusing on the use of each muscle, so that your mind's connection to your body is strengthened as much as the muscles themselves are.

Little Known Fact: A large portion of your strength comes from neuromuscular coordination (the mind muscle link), rather than from the actual size of your muscles. Large or "toned" muscles won't do you much good if you can't consciously as well as unconsciously control them.

Conclusion

The exercise ball is one of the best overall inventions in the history of exercise. The ball itself as well as similar devices that have been created based on the instability factor of the exercise ball have helped countless people to have more effective workouts that provide real-world benefits.

However, the best tool in the world is useless unless it is utilized properly. Now you know how to properly utilize an exercise ball! 

Click here to see more exercises that use an exercise ball.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to almost 2,000 exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Alternating Single Leg Bridge

In a nutshell, the idea is to hold yourself as absolutely still as possible, while at the same time raising one leg at a time up as high as you can, and then hold it there for one full second before alternating to the other leg. To get the most out this exercise, keep your elbows slightly bent the entire time that you are doing the exercise, and also do not let your back sag. You will get much more muscular activation as well as strengthening of the core stabilization muscles by keeping your elbows bent, maintaining a straight back, and lifting each leg up as high as possible for each repetition.

Click here to see more exercises that use an exercise ball.

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!

© Aaron Potts - visit Fitness Destinations for more great information about weight loss, health, and overall fitness!
Fitness Destinations is proudly sponsored by the incredible products and services provided by Team Beachbody!