More For Your Core? You Be The Judge…
This summer Seung-ni Fit Club started offering a new class called Core N More. Exercises in this class focus on training your whole body and building muscle and core strength, not unlike our other fitness classes. The difference? Each and every exercise is done using a stability ball. Stability ball exercises are effective in improving posture, increasing overall balance and stability, and building pillar strength in your abdominal and lower back muscles – muscles that protect your lumbar spine and help maintain the core stability in your body. Maintaining proper alignment on a ball stimulates the body’s natural motor reflexes and encourages the body to react as a whole, integrated unit. This type of movement corresponds to movement we make during our daily routines – lifting, reaching, bending. A stability ball is a simple but versatile piece of training equipment that can take an ordinary exercise and compound it. It takes strength to do a set of pushups on the floor. But challenge yourself by placing your hands on a stability ball to do the pushup? Now your central nervous system has to recruit more muscles to keep you balanced. You’ll challenge your body’s feedback/response system, asking it to make quick adjustments to keep you stable. You‘ll activate, stabilize and strengthen muscles you didn’t even know you had. And you’ll gain a great feeling of accomplishment when you can perform on an unstable, mobile surface. The difficulty of an exercise increases somewhat, but the benefit increases exponentially. Training on the ball challenges the whole body to participate in order to maintain correct posture and balance, and to perform dynamic movement. It can improve muscle tone, increase muscle endurance and strength, restore and improve flexibility, enhance spinal stability, help you lose weight, and improve your balance, posture and coordination. Seung-ni Core N More is a great complement to our other resistance and cardio training programs.
Jennifer Dutmers is a group fitnes instructor at Seung-ni Traverse City where she teaches Core N More, Kickboxing and Body Sculpt Classes.
