Leg Exercise - Hamstring Curls with Swiss Ball

Commonly Used For: Knee pain and post-surgical recovery.

Video Transcription: I'm going to show you how to do hamstring curls with an exercise ball now [here's a Swiss Ball via Amazon.com]. It's a great way to strengthen the muscles in the back of your thigh here as well as turning on your core muscles as they'll be needed to stabilize you on the ball. So, you're going to get down on the floor, put your feet up on the ball, lay down flat. You're going to tighten your stomach muscles first in order to help prevent any sort of low back pain. You're going to bridge up, and then, maintaining that bridge with your hips nice and level, your going to curl the ball in towards your bottom and back out, maintaining your hips the same level the whole time. The tendency is to let your hips drop as you curl the ball in, so make sure you stay up nice and high, maintaining that bridge while you curl the ball in and out. You should feel a nice burn going on in your hamstrings. So, that's your hamstring curls with the exercise ball.

Leg Exercise - Bridge Exercise with Swiss Ball

Commonly Used For: Knee pain, hip pain, back pain and core strengthening.

Video Transcription: I'm going to show you how to do bridges with an exercise ball [here's one from Amazon.com], which is a good way to strengthen both your glutes and your hamstrings as well as your core, as you'll be needing to stabilize the exercise ball. So, what you're going to do is you're going to get on the floor. You're going to put your feet up on the ball, lay down flat. You can do this with either your knees bent or straight. So, you're going to keep your knees straight, you're going to have your feet up on the ball and just lift straight up, squeezing your glutes as you lift up off the floor and slowly lowering yourself back down. So, where your core strengthening comes in is you need to keep it stable. Don't let it wiggle around. You're just nice and tight, and back down. If you're going to do it with your knees bent, bring the ball in a little bit more, dig your heels down into the ball, and bridge up nice and slow. This one, you're going to feel it a little bit more in those hamstrings as well as in the glutes. You should feel no low back pain with this. If you do, you might be either bridging up too high and arching your low back, or you need to tighten your stomach muscles more before you lift up off the ground. So that's how you do your Swiss Ball bridges.