Desk Exercise Ball - Making Sure You're Helping, Not Hurting, Your Posture

A recent trend in health and fitness is the use of an exercise ball, especially using it to replace your office chair.  It is important to make sure you’ve chosen the right ball for your body type.

This YouTube video gives helpful tips for using a desk exercise ball correctly from a doctors perspective, as well as giving some other general office health tips: 

 How to Use an Exercise Ball Chair

 First of all, you have to make sure the exercise ball is large enough to suit your height, because you don’t want to be sitting too low at your desk.  You also need to make sure it’s firm enough.  After that, there are many different positions you can sit in, each of which having different health benefits.

Figure 4. My basement office area [Photograph] by Doug Alcorn, 2006, Adapted from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lathi/116860636/

Exercise balls are especially useful for office ab workouts because your core in constantly being worked as you try to keep your balance.  They are also great because you can sit on the ball while you perform additional exercise at the desk.

Have you ever used an exercise ball as an office chair? How did you like it?

Looking for some more information? Check out this blog post: Desk Exercises