23 Health Benefits of Using Exercise Ball as A Chair

Sitting on the chair for hours will cause you pain, especially if you are a worker or someone who stays in sitting position improperly. It will effect your metabolism system, cause you lower back pain, bone problems, and body health. Meanwhile, there must be a solution to solve it. Thus, changing your typical chair to exercise ball as your new chair is the best option. You may be worry cause exercise ball is mostly use only in gym corner or another sport center, but now you can also use it for your alternative chair. In case you ever heard, there are many benefits to make exercise ball as your chair that is good for your health.

1. Burn Up Your Daily Calories

When you are sitting on regular chair, automatically your whole body does not move and this activity will remain to add calories to your body. Oppositely, when you use exercise ball as your chair, you will move to balancing the ball to stay still. Then, this is going to be a simple way. The more movement you do from the exercise ball, the more calories you burn. However, while you are doing your desk time sitting on the exercise ball, you can keep burning your daily calories to stay health.

2. Heal Back Pain

This is can be the solution if you ever experiencing back pain when you are sitting it the same position for long time. Using exercise ball will get you to focus on maintaining good gesture, so that you have space to stretching your body. However, it is not a magical way, you need to keep the exercise until you have good sitting position and your backbone would not feel pain. It is then will be your traditional way to relive the back pain.

3. Fitness Everyday

You can bring your exercise ball wherever you are. Whether you work on computer, do homework, or anything, you can just sit on the exercise ball and feel like you are in gym. It is a brilliant alternative that you can still work on your stuff and do exercise at the same time. Especially if you are a busy person that have so many work to done. You can work out wherever you are, you do not need to spend some more schedules to hit the fitness center. However, we can call it “two in one,” that you stay on your desk having your job finished and get the free exercise to keep health on track.

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4. Build Muscle

As we know that there is no muscle moves or works when you sit in office chair, then you feel stiff. Thus, in the stability ball you will learn to exercise your body position in certain ways. People who sit in the exercise ball burn calories four time better that those who just sit in office chair. However, the first thing that you will do is to get the right size of the exercise ball to fit in, not too big or too small, but standard ball for your body size. Then, do some simple exercise like move to the left and right in slow speed and place your feet right on the floor. Meanwhile, if in one full day you sit in this exercise for eight hours, than you can imagine how good you can workout to build muscles. Well, if you are about to build six-pack then this alternative is also good as it will build ab muscle too. As a result, it will automatically burn the muscle up.

Read more Best Exercise For Weight Loss

5. Good Posture

People who sit in the office chair usually not having proportional body posture. Likewise, their back is crooked and cannot stand steady because of the office chair, or the wooden one, was not designed comfortably for body along from backbone to lower back. Even when we try to stretching our arms up, it is not working well. Then, that is one of the cause of scoliosis where vertical bone of the spine did not lining straight. Thus, no one of us wanted to have it, so it is better to prevent it. Meanwhile, it will not be happen if you use exercise ball as a chair cause your body will generally move. The backbone will significantly move too, not stuck in one position till it gets stiff. Moreover, there is no chair arms that will get you to stay balance and it is almost like you are doing Yoga. As a result, the body posture will be improved, not automatically result, but it will surely works.

6. Energetic Mode On

Staying in the same boring position for hour to hour, of course, will make you feel exhausted. Especially, if you are having so much to do on your office desk and it tires you. However, by using exercise ball that thing will get better as when you move the ball, it will gives you something to shoot. The good energy will splash through you on every movement. Well, the bright color of your exercise ball is also good to cheer your eyes and energized you during your working time.

7. Fun Booster

Once more, exercise ball is an alternative to a chair. It’s a bouncing chair and you will feel like playing on the playground. You cannot believe how you can sit in unusual chair, unique, and useful, but now you can. When the job that you are doing is frustrating you, then just bounce over. This alternative chair can be your entertainment or mood boaster too. Meanwhile, it can be so fun to try.

8. Circulation Improvement

When we are not doing exercise, then automatically our body will get some health problems such as circulation problem, especially when our daily activity is doing working hours that not let us to move. Meanwhile, this is another benefit of using exercise ball that it will improve circulation as you will be sitting in straight spine that will train the oxygen and blood smoothly.

Furthermore, There Are More Benefits of Using Exercise Ball as a Chair

9. Balance Exercise – It is sure to be a balance exercise that will react to your core muscle for a simple exercise.

10. Cost-less Furniture – Buying office chair that has good quality is expensive, while some chairs are too stiff or uncomfortable. Yet, Swiss Ball well known as exercise ball is quite cheap-20% cheaper than a good ergonomic chair. Thus, exercise ball has soft and elastic form that will fit the way you sit on.

11. Strengthen Abdominal Muscle – Using this exercise ball is a simple movement will burn at least 30 calories a day or 1 lb of fat, and give you the low key abdominal workout. It is then will strengthen the muscle of feet, thigh, and lower back.

12. Core stability – When body is positioned upright, it will automatically adjust to stomach and shoulder too. Thus, it is the exercise to strengthen the core muscle and guide to the core stability.

13. For Therapy – The benefit of using exercise ball as a chair is we can use it for therapy if we have problems such as neck pain, spine, or back pain. Also, for children with basic needs, it can be used on learning to focus on unstable chair.

14. Extension Exercise – Resting from the worksheet and doing extension exercise simply on you exercise ball chair.

15. Exercise on the Spot – Now that we can do exercise wherever, even at the desk. Exercise ball chair challenge us to sit upright and we can use it as a simple exercise.

16. Proper Sitting Position – While regular or office chair provide improper sitting position causing pain, exercise ball as a chair provides a good sitting position. Upper arms should be parallel to spine and thighs parallel to floor.

17. Inspiration to Stretch – Still, an exercise ball is a part of sport equipment even when you use it as furniture, that will inspire you to stretch or move.

18. Reduce Damage from Sitting – Exercise ball encourages you to change your seating position and automatically it will reduce the damage of sitting.

19. Proper Spine – It is an unstable chair that encourages your body to balance it with the straight spine position. Surely, it corrects the shoulder, the spine, to line up straight.

20. Strength Training – The stability ball can be used for strength training as it is impact to all muscle in the body.

21. Blasting Cardio – Cardio exercise is so fine to burn fat. You can use you exercise ball chair as your fitness tool. There are many movements that you can do such as squat, triceps dips, and more.

22. Improve Endurance – Using exercise ball challenges the whole body to maintaining endurance.

23. Why Not? – Why not using exercise ball as an office chair? First, you can do your office work while listening music and bounce over. Second, after long tiring day you can use the ball to play around with your office fellow.

One thing that should be noted is, replacing the office work with exercise ball is so challenging. For the first time, it might feel wrong cause we are not used to use it. Then, we might think to go back to the old armed chair. Thus, before we use the exercise ball, we must know the steps.

How to Sit on Exercise Ball

Choose the right size and height of ball to your body. Further, if you are over 6 feet, choose a 30 inch ball and if you are about 5 feet 7 tall, choose a 22 inches ball. This is so important to choose the right size and height to eliminate the risk of injury.
Brace the ball with pillow or something to prevent the ball to roll over and also to keep you not to fall.
Place your feet flat and hip distance. Sit up right and straight, legs position in 90 degree.
Set your desk right in front of you and set the computer monitor right to your eyes level to prevent neck pain.
Exercise the ball and start to learn balancing, try to balancing your weight and take a breath to control it.
Then, then sit on the ball, forearms on the 90 degree balance, and try to relax.
For the beginners, keep practicing it until your body react, tighten muscle, place feet at the right position.
Use the ball for the first 20 minutes to help you adapt to new sitting position.
If you feel it is comfortable enough, you can then try to do your desk job.

Meanwhile, there are some risks if you are swapping exercise ball as a office work, include:

Risk of an injury because of the ball may be slipped.
Losing concentration of the workstation because you are too focus on balancing the ball.
It is not quite flexible to use in active work day.
The exercise ball is not a full seat with back support and upright posture may be lost in long term of sitting.

As a result, switching office chair or another standard armed chair with exercise ball is an alternative chair to keep healthy as there are many benefits that we can get, such as to heal back pain, get good posture, and build muscle.