It’s about time someone put a stop to the madness. I’m talking about recall of 3,000,000 fitness balls.
The truth is, this piece of “equipment” can be extremely dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. It doesn’t take a CSCS to tell you that anything involving a barbell, one or more 45 plates, and a stability ball is probably not a good idea.
Thanks to BiasTraining from the Super-Trainer personal training forum for this picture – and here are some of the responses:
“look at the serious looks on their faces…wow…prolly due to the fact that if the dude even did so much as farted, he’d crumple underneath the bar, twist his right ankle, screw up his knee, and jack up his back…LOL!”
-fitprosarah
“Somebody has some serious photoshopping skills. There is no way that actually happened. I mean did it?”
-TrainerGriff
Wow. Maybe we should hunt this personal trainer down for a guest interview so we can ask try and see what’s going through his head .. Because apparently, there are actual products being sold dedicated to Swiss Ball Training.
Now that’s a $79.95 well spent!
I don’t know a whole lot about the CHEK Institute or what they teach over there.. I’ve heard plenty of good things about them. All I know is it’s time to put our time and energy into creating products that will actually benefit trainers and, of course, the clients who will actually performing the exercises.
Here’s another example of some questionable judgment by them:
[youtube BEvmmflj49E nolink]
But in all fairness, Paul Chek isn’t the only one to blame – there have had some serious lapses in judgment on this site as well:
[youtube p6sCZpZdaa8 nolink]
If you’re planning your own fitness info product NOT related to swiss ball training, there’s an event THIS WEEKEND that you don’t want to miss.
If you haven’t signed up for the Fast Track To Fitness Millions, you should. The connections I’ve gained from attending the previous fitness business events this month have been well worth the time and money.
It’s getting close to the deadline, but there’s still time.
I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed writing this post.. With the type of stuff I see every night at the gym, it’s nice to able to rant about it a little bit. I haven’t seen anything quite as bad as picture above in person before, though very close!
If you haven’t thrown in your two cents yet, you’ll want to head over to the Super-Trainer Forum and let your voice be heard. There is a unique and very tight-knit community being developed on there of trainers committed to reaching a wide audience with quality fitness products and services. There are lots of Top-Level trainers sharing knowledge and helping each other out.
But if you’re a swissball-barbell-squat type of trainer, maybe our forum isn’t the right one for you.. Haha!
haha good one never thought that picture could turn out to be such a great blog for the page. Thanks for the reps!! very funny stuff here guys
Haha I love this post! I bet we can all appreciate those trainers out there (and gym-goers) doing a bunch of idiotic stuff just because they think it looks cool. I hear that leaving the gym in an ambulance is a major “babe magnet”. That’s the word on the street at least. Thanks Kaiser for the laughs.
For the average client who is looking to tone up or lose weight etc squats on swiss ball and other equally unstable shenanigans is a fantastic way to lose a clients confidence, as trips to the hospital really give you time to think. However when I was at University they did a study on Australian rules football players and their incidence of ACL injuries after training like this (yes they were doing barbell squats on the swiss balls). Aussie rules football has a horrible rate of ACL injuries and the subjects of the study were shown to have greatly lower incidence of ligament damage in the proceeding season. Don’t right off this type of training entirely, there are some cases when if well progressed up to it can have great benefits. By the way it took about 4 months of leadup before they were doing squats on the swiss balls incidentally after his last knee injury brazilian soccer legend Ronaldo was doing single leg squats on swiss balls, but he is a freak. For all of my clients, no chance i’m letting them stand on a swiss ball.
YAY!
I’m so happy you featured this, Kaiser, and thanks to biastraining for starting up the “fun” in the forum!!!!!!!
I have mixed feelings about Paul Chek. The dude is a genius, but some of his stuff is flippin’ ridiculous. I know of a trainer who worships the ground he walks on, and i’ve witnessed people doing that 2-ball flye…that was like 3 years ago, so hopefully things have changed?
I have never been one of the “standing on a ball” proponents…nor have I ever been a wobble board proponent. I do own a BOSU, and blogged last week, in fact, about BOSU misuse, along with a few exercises for those who can handle them.
We all know that the basics work! When people try to make things “cool,” that’s when there’s a problem. I think this happens when a trainer feels inferior and/or has a lack of experience. It’s easy to try and “play” smart, when in fact you’re blatantly the opposite to those in the know!
Yours in Health,
Sarah
Yeah props on finding that pic, Bias – When I saw the thread you started with that pic, I knew you were onto something funny ..
Haha Leanne – Yeah I’d have to agree that a girl’s never come up to me and complimented me on my ability balance.. especially on an inflatable ball.
Oliver, yes I’m sure there are times when it’s appropriate to do this type of training, but like yous said – for the greater population, not a CHANCE.
SARAH!! You’re absolutely right – new and different doesn’t mean smart – A lot of times it means nobody’s doing it b/c it’s flat out stupid!!! ha ha
Why are most of you so judgemental? I’m sure that guy squatting on the stability ball probably isn’t in his first month of training. If he has the skill and ability to try something outside the box, and he’s willing to accept the risks involved and owns up to his actions, why shouldn’t he do it. Have any of you actually been witness to someone injuring themselves that severely that they had to be taken to the hospital by an ambulance? In my 11 years in the fitness industry i’ve never seen that. According to all your logic, nobody should do any kind of contact or extreme sport because there is risk of injury involved. Ever been to a cirque du soleil performance? They probably train in ways 10 times more crazy and those performers are in better shape than any of you will ever be in your entire lives. If your only point is that inexperienced trainers are endangering deconditioned clients by skipping from point A to point Z and having them do extremely advanced stuff without any logical progression then say so, but don’t generalize that all extreme stability ball training is worthless or idiotic because that is not the case. I’ve been doing exercises like those for a decade and i’ve never injured myself, and neither have any of my clients. I see more people injure themselves playing golf than on a stability ball. Actually if you spend enough time in a large gym, you’ll see more people injure themselves by being thrown off a treadmill while they are messing with their IPOD or cell phone. I’ll bet more people roll their ankles doing step ups and plyo jumps on a bench, than stability ball stuff. In my experience, chronic overuse injuries and build up of microtrauma injuries is much more common than major acute injuries. Anytime i’ve ever heard of someone having a major acute injury in the gym or with a trainer, it was because the client tried to do something they hadn’t progressed up to. That can happen with any type of exercise. Doing a double ball chest fly is no more dangerous than doing an iron cross in gymnastics. Yes it takes a lot of shoulder stability which is why it is an advanced move. Standing on a ball seems no more dangerous than riding on a unicycle, ice skating, snowboarding, etc. I’ll admit I don’t have 90% of my clients progress to the point of doing exercises that advanced, but why should I limit the other 10%.
Also anyone that has their clients do extreme stability ball exercises on cheap equipment is just using bad judgement. All trainers and facilities should cough up the extra dough for the top quality reinforced stability balls.
As a trainer, you need to make sure that what ever exercise you choose for your client, meet their needs. I find the sometimes some trainers add intense/or high risk exercise (swiss ball standing squats) just to see or bring something new to the table for their clients. But then again, its also about the level of comfortness of the trainer and client to execute those kind of risky movement on the swiss ball. Some exercises can be few as good for some, and others will try to avoid them as much as possible. For an example: I am a not a big fan of the bench press, and usually never add it in a workout plan because of its high risk of shoulders injuries.
A few comments:
In general, I think most people in the fitness industry agree now that squatting with a barbell on top of a swiss ball is idiotic. I’m pretty sure the guy in the photo is J.P. from JPFitness dot com and he’s stated over and over that he is not a proponent of squatting on a ball, it’s just something he was messing around with a few years ago and that picture has been floating around as an indication of what an asshole anyone is who tries to make the swiss ball the anything and everything of training.
I’m not sure I see the big problem with the two ball flye. I’ve never tried it but it looks perfectly safe, just a bit weird. Cosgrove always says that in the fitness industry everything swings from one extreme to another. Either everyone is in love with instability training or then 6 months later it’s the worst idea ever. Meanwhile anyone who was photographed or videotaped training a certain way is held up for ridicule.
Chek has accomplished a great deal over his long career and should be treated with a bit more respect, he has certified hundreds of quality trainers and everyone I know who has worked with him respects him because he is always continuing to learn.
Great site by the way!
Darren and Nick – You brought up some solid points here. Anytime you perform a movement of any kind, there is an element of risk at play – Our goals as trainers are to make the distinction between calculated risk vs potential benefit and reward that can come out of a particular exercise
And as experienced trainers, we know that back squatting 135 on a ball falls WAY over on the risk side of the line with few benefits..
Yeah Lucas, it’s all about doing the best thing for the individual client – no doubt about it.
I think most trainers can appreciate the HUMOR of this situation and have a good laugh about it – I mean, 3,000,000 fitness balls weren’t recalled for no reason!
Unbelievable!!! His form is so out of whack. Why would another person, especially an authorative figure encourage someone to partake this movement. I mean look at his knees surpassing the feet. Could someone please explain the logic?
I honestly believe any type of ball workout other than perhaps calisthenics is insanely dangerous and illogical.
Love the Swiss Ball Training. But safety is #1. Does anyone ever think about what would happen if it popped? Oh it has too. Guys using it as a bench to bench press heavy weights then the ball pops. Funny but so sad and painful.
That picture is rediculous lol, i have taken a few CHEK courses, and the swiss ball training that was presented was very simple and effective movements i.e. back on ball hip extensions, forward ball roll, etc. The CHEK institute has some great information and some extremely good professors, the problem is the students sometimes take some extreme examples they see at the intstitute——->ex. laird hamilton arguably the greatest big wave surfer of all time, is a client of the CHEK institute, and performs some exercises(not barbell squats) standing on a swiss ball, for laird who’s entire sport revolves around being on an unstable object a surfboard, standing on a swiss ball (from a good company, not a piece of trash one you buy at k-mart for $20) makes sense….. for a student to see that and think they he/she can apply it to his/her own client who probably needs work on a body weight squat does not make sense…. the sad part is this is not part of all trainers “COMMON SENSE” lol