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Finally, some fitness sanity!
Many so-called fitness breakthroughs are just silly ideas designed to sell you fitness equipment. Over the last few years one of these fitness “breakthroughs” has been working out on unstable surfaces.
For example, doing dumbbell bench presses on a Swiss ball instead of a bench.
NO!
This dangerous idea was sold as bringing into play the muscle stabilizers more than a stable surface would, thus somehow “activating” more muscle fibers and improving your muscle building and fat loss results.
I’ve been railing against how dumb and dangerous this is for years.
Another example is doing dumbbell bicep curls while standing on an unstable surface such as a wobble board. I saw a picture of Phoenix Suns point card Steve Nash doing this. What fool gives an athlete tens of millions of dollars and then lets him do this? Crazy!
Finally a study was done (Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24: 1028-1033, 2010) that proved this dangerous idea to be false. The study measured muscle activation during dumbbell chest or shoulder presses on a Swiss ball vs. on a stable surface.
This study showed no additional muscle activation while training on an unstable service. Other studies, using more experienced trainees, showed greater muscle activation on stable surfaces.
The only thing you’re going to get from training on an unstable surface is an injury. Think about what would happen if you lost control of a dumbbell while benching on a Swiss ball. Your shoulder may never be the same. Or your chest. Or if you rolled off the Swiss ball and knocked yourself out with the dumbbell. This is crazy!
NO!
Another recent study (International Journal Sports Physiology Performance, 5: 177-183, 2010) confirmed this as well.
A study led by Jeffrey McBride at Appalachian State University showed that stable squatting did a superior job of overloading the lower-body muscles when compared to unstable squatting.
There is not one study that I know of that found exercising on any unstable surface like a Swiss ball or Wobble board, improved athletic performance or built more strength any better than training on a stable surface.
Here’s a great one for you. Recently, I was watching some training footage of a UFC fighter getting ready for a big fight.
At one point, he was doing squats on the smith machine. He descended properly into the bottom of the squat and began his push to the top. So far so good. Until he exploded out of the bottom position and JUMPED as high as he could. Yes, with a loaded barbell on his spine!
I guess he was trying to develop “explosive” strength. Are you kidding me? This is nuts!
While this is common sense to most of us, many people new to working out fall for these dangerous ideas. Please, when reading about new fitness programs, use a little common sense. It may very well keep you from a serious injury.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I never did get that whole unstable training stuff. Just doesn’t make sense. How does that help at all? Just another gimmick.
Thanks, Gregg! I bought a workout program that came with a Swiss ball and had me do exercises like this. I didn’t feel comfortable at all trying to balance myself and worry about the weights. Needless to say, I didn’t stick with for very long.