Bridging on the Exercise Ball
Starting
Position
- Bridging on the
exercise ball requires you to start by lying supine on the floor with
your heels on the ball
- Arms are straight and
out to the sides of your body
- Get your spine into a
nice neutral position by using the abdominal hollowing technique.
Action
- Slowly raise your hips
until your body is straight from heels to shoulders.
- Breath normally and
maintain neutral position.
- You should feel your
body straightening out as you lift your pelvis off the floor
Prime
Movers
- Hamstrings, glutes,
back extensors
Physio
Tips
- There are 3 points of
stable contact, 2 points of unstable contact.
- As you fatigue your
hips will sag. Try to prevent this by engaging your abdominal
musculature through
abdominal
hollowing.
- Avoid pushing your
hips too high and arching your back.
- Try to maintain the neutral position.
- Keep transversus
abdominus active at all times by pulling your belly button in and up
- Don't move your head
during this exercise
Progression
Because
you are lying
supine (face up), this exercise biases the muscles on the back of your
spine, back of the pelvis, back of the legs and back of the
shoulders: hamstrings, glutes, posterior deltoid, etc.
If
you start to feel yourself sag or start to shake, your exercise is
done. We are trying to achieve a sustained contraction of the small
muscles around your spine as well as the stabilizing muscles of your
pelvis. When you start to shake we know they have fatigued and the
larger more superficial muscles are trying to take over. They of course
are not designed for the fine control and so their use results in the
shaking.
With
your arms spread out to your sides you give yourself a large base
of support making this exercise relatively easy. One way of making this
exercise more challenging is by decreasing the size of your base of
support. Simply move your arms closer to your body.
If
you feel you're an expert at this now you can reduce the size of
your base of support and reduce the number of points of contact to two
simply by lifting both arms up. Make sure you can achieve position 2
above and maintain it without difficulty. By lifting both arms off the
floor you have one point of stable contact, and two points of unstable
contact. This is much more advanced.
3 repetitions held for
10 seconds
5 repetitions held for
10 seconds
3 repetitions held for
30 seconds
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