The Swiss ball put to the test

The original use of the Swiss ball was to develop activation of the lower back and abdominal muscles in patients with lower-back injuries.

Swiss balls are an unstable surface which may result in an increased need for force output from trunk muscles to provide adequate spinal stability or balance.

Doing exercises on a swiss ball instead of a flat surface is supposed to increase your "core strength" because of the difficulty of balancing during the exercise.

A recent study tried to determine if the use of a Swiss ball instead of an exercise bench results in consistent increases across subjects in trunk muscle activation levels during upper body strength training exercises.

The myoelectric activity of four trunk muscles was quantified during the performance of upper body resistance exercises while seated on both a stable (exercise bench) and labile (swiss ball) surface. Participants performed the supine chest press, shoulder press, lateral raise, biceps curl and overhead triceps extension.

There was no statistically significant difference in muscle activity between surface conditions. However, there was large degree of variability across subjects suggesting that some individuals respond differently to surface stability.

These findings suggest that the incorporation of swiss balls instead of an exercise bench into upper body strength training regimes may not be justified based only on the belief that an increase spinal stabilizing musculature activity is inherent.

Biomechanically justified ground based exercises have been researched and should form the basis for spinal stability training as preventative and therapeutic exercise training regimes.

Selected trunk muscle activity during certain upper limb strength training exercises is not consistently influenced by the replacement of an exercise bench with a swiss ball.

More research

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References
Lehman GJ, Gordon T, Langley J, Pemrose P, Tregaskis S. (2005). Replacing a Swiss ball for an exercise bench causes variable changes in trunk muscle activity during the performance of upper limb strength exercises. Dynamic Medicine, 4, 6