Do You Bosu?

Posted on Nov 15, 2010 by Anthony



You have more than likely seen this semi-circle looking ball thingy laying around your gym, but may not know what it is or all of the benefits you can get out of adding it to your workout routine. Perhaps you already use it to do your crunches on and think that is all it's good for. Well, you're wrong! I'm going to tell you several other workouts you can perform on the bosu to mix it up and maximize your results.

Working on the bosu requires balance. In order to balance on it, you must engage your core (abs, center back) muscles. This provides a much more focused and intense workout, causing your muscles to fire in a variety of different ways. It's all about muscle confusion and hitting them from different angles and exercises to keep them guessing. There are many, many exercises you could incorporate into the bosu, but try these few out to start and feel the difference:

1. Abs- Sit on it and perform a normal crunch. Legs out in front, simply lean back and sit up. Move on to V-Ups. Sit up right on it, with your chest high, lift your legs up so that your body forms a V. Hold this position as long as you can.

2. Chest- Turn it over, so the flat bottom is facing up. Begin perfoming push ups. This may sound easy, but it will try to roll around on you, causing you to fully engage your core to keep it stable.

(The following exercises require weight. You never want to use heavy weight when working with the bosu due to the fact that you are at risk for losing your balance. If that happened, you would not want to be holding a super heavy weight. You could be seriously injured. Plus, you dont need heavy weights for these exercises...This is core work! Your body will get a top level workout without going overboard on the weight).

3. Arms- Biceps...Stand on the top round area and perform dumbell bicep curls. Simple enough, right. Again, with the added difficulty of maintaining balance, this exercise will challenge you. Triceps...Stan on the top round area, bend over and perform dumbell kickbacks.

4. Shoulders- Stand on the top of the round area and perform dumbell raises, both over head presses and side lateral raises.

5. Legs- You may stand on either side of the bosu. For your first time, I recommend you stand on the top round area to get your form down, then graduated to turning it over and standing on the flat bottom side. Perform squats while doing this. You may hold dumbells in your hands, just above your shoulders or down at your side, once you have your form down, to increase the intensity.

6. Butt- Turn the bosu over with the flat side facing up and get in the push up position, holding yourself up directly over it, with your legs extended straight behind you. Use your glute to lift up leg up as high as you can. Repeat the lifting as many times as you can, then switch to the other leg.

Try these simple exercises and watch how your body will adapt. These will force you to maintain a flexed core the entire time, which will give you an extra ab workout while you are primarily working on another muscle group. http://sbi0.sitesell.com/cgi-bin/Solo Build It/graphicsLib.pl?NAME_1=ButtomBanner1.jpg&AFF_CODE=225717&DOMAIN=vipfitnessms.com&THEBUTTON=BUTTON_CLICK&SHOW_1=Show%2BMe&COUNT=1 Return to top of Bosu page