Swiss Ball & Weights

Great class to strengthen and sculpt the whole body, but especially your abs and the deep core muscles. A combination of compound resistance exercise using the gym balls and dumbbells. This class will both strengthen the back as well as abs making all your other workouts much more controlled and helps prevent injury.

The physical object known as a "Swiss Ball" was developed in 1963 by Aquilino Cosani, an Italian plastics manufacturer. He perfected a process for molding large puncture-resistant plastic balls. Those balls, then known as "Pezzi balls", were first used in treatment programs for newborns and infants by Mary Quinton, a British physiotherapist working in Switzerland. Later, Dr. Susanne Klein-Vogelbach, the director at the Physical Therapy School in Basel, Switzerland, integrated the use of ball exercise as physical therapy for neuro-developmental treatment. Based on the concept of "functional kinetics" Klein-Vogelbach advocated the use of ball techniques to treat adults with orthopedic or medical problems. The term "Swiss Ball" was used when American physical therapists began to use those techniques in North America after witnessing their benefits in Switzerland. From their development as physical therapy in a clinical setting, those exercises are now used at Vitality.

A primary benefit of exercising with an exercise ball as opposed to exercising directly on a hard flat surface is that the body responds to the instability of the ball to remain balanced, engaging many more muscles. Those muscles become stronger over time to keep balance. Most frequently, the core body muscles — the abdominal muscles and back muscles — are the focus of exercise ball fitness programs.