Got a Swiss ball and have a burning desire to get a stronger back? If so you’re in the right place! The Swiss ball is an excellent tool to help strengthen your back. It’s simple, versatile and with practice you will feel confident doing these exercises.
(If you’re interested in the history of how the Swiss ball came to be, read here – I’m a bit of a trivia fan so thought I’d include this link here!)
The first thing I recommend before getting started is making sure your Swiss ball has enough air in it. If it’s under-inflated, everything will be much harder and you won’t feel supported and subconsciously you’ll hold back and not use muscular recruitment in the same way. So make sure it’s nice and firm and then you’ll be ready to go.
I’m going to show you 3 of my favourite back strengthening exercises that you can do using a Swiss ball.
Drum roll please!
1. Swiss Ball Plank
This is one of my favourite exercises using the Swiss Ball as it is simple yet deceptively challenging. This is an excellent anti-rotation exercise that trains the Transverse Abdominis, scapular stability and lumbar pelvic control. Put one knee on the apex of the ball and place your hands shoulder-distance apart. Make sure you are ‘cambering’ your fingers (I go over this in detail in this video here and press the floor away firmly with your hands and that you are not turning your hands out or in. Try to have your middle finger pointing straight ahead. If your shoulders are tight, you can externally rotate the hands a little bit until you feel your shoulder blades engaging.
Inhale, bring both knees to the top of the ball and brace your navel into your spine. Exhale, walk the ball down your legs until your mid-shin is on the ball. Make sure to squeeze your quads and glutes. Don’t hang the head but tuck your chin slightly and gaze down to the floor a little bit ahead of you. Gently tuck your tail bone and feel it reaching down between your feet. This is called a ‘posterior pelvic tilt’ and will help engage your core properly.
Breathe here, starting with 5-10 seconds if this is new for you, and work your way up to 30 seconds.
2. Crane Prep Hold
This is an excellent exercise to re-awaken our Latissimus Dorsi, aka our Lats. The biggest muscles on our back, they are often pretty dormant, so it is very important to get these activated to strengthen and protect our back.
First of all, let’s get familiar with what it feels like when the lats are firing. Bring your knees to the top of the Swiss ball as I had described earlier in the Swiss Ball Plank, making the same placement with the hands and cambering the fingers. Inhale, push the floor away, exhale, very slightly or micro bend the elbows out to the side. You should be able to feel the areas around your shoulder blades tightening – this is your lats engaging. Memorize what this feels like, holding for 5-8 seconds, then inhale, straighten your arms and exhale, repeat the micro bend.
Do this about 5 times to really dial in that feeling of lat activation.
Now, we’re ready for the Crane Prep Hold. Inhaling, push the floor away, exhale gently bring your knees into your chest until you can feel your lats firing and your back working. This may take some practice to feel lat activation with straight arms, so if you’re not feeling it right away, stay with micro bending the arms in the prep exercise and don’t worry about bringing the knees too close to the chest.
If you do feel your lats firing, good work! Stay in Crane Prep Hold for 10-30 seconds and repeat 3-5 times.
3. Swiss Ball Crunch
Here we will be lying over the Swiss Ball and doing a ‘crunch’ which targets the Rectus Abdominus or ‘6 pack muscle’. Sit on the top of the ball and gently walk your feet out, keeping control of the ball by grounding through your feet. Place your feet hip distance apart and make sure the balls of your feet are grounded. Spread your toes and lift the arches. When the shins are vertical, you should have your mid and upper back supported. Squeeze your glutes and make sure the ball isn’t too low on your back. Spread your fingers and gently cup your head, keeping elbows wide and look a little bit forward, making sure the back of your neck is long. Resist the urge to pull on your neck.
Inhale, gently lie back a little bit on the ball, exhale lift your sternum up towards the ceiling. You should feel your abs contracting. Repeat 10-20 times.
The name of the game here is to train muscular engagement. And this takes awareness and repetition. The good news is that once you’ve built that awareness and you know you’re engaging these muscles correctly, then you don’t need to do a lot of volume to get the benefits. Use your Swiss ball to do these exercises and you’ll have some great tools in your arsenal to strengthen your back, increase athleticism and protect your shoulder girdle.
