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.

one exercise ball3 repetitions held for 10 seconds

2 exercise balls5 repetitions held for 10 seconds

3 exercise balls3 repetitions held for 30 seconds

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Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced