Video and Transcript: BOSU Ball Balance Exercises

Hi, everyone! Dr. Orit Hickman here from Pain Science Physical Therapy. And, I wanted to do another balance video. Some of you may have a BOSU ball at home, or you’ve thought about purchasing one. There’s actually a lot of great exercises that you can do with a BOSU. I’m just going to show you a few. They’re very similar to the ones that you would do on a foam pad.

So, first is I would have you stand near a surface where you can grab on to balance if you need to. So, a mat table in the clinic would work great for us. At home, you might use a countertop, a sofa, or even a stick, so I’ve got this stick right here. I’m actually going to get that out of my way right now. And, when you go to stand on the BOSU, there are these--these circles in the center. I’m just going to try and stabilize with my feet on either side of the circle. And, you can see just in and of itself just standing on the BOSU is challenging. So, with this, that’s the first thing. Right? Just standing hip--feet about hip width apart. You can then work towards getting feet more narrow. And, you can see as soon as I do that, that’s going to be a little bit more challenging. Right? So, normal base of support. Narrow base of support.

Then, you go to balancing on one leg. Right? And, doing this on either side. Whoops! I gotta get up there first. Don’t I? Right? And balancing on one leg.

And then, what’s really fun, I think, about BOSU balls for balance is actually doing a little bit of movement. So, putting your feet about hip width apart and doing a little mini squat. That’s a wonderful thing that you can do on a BOSU. Ok?

You can also, just like you’ve seen in some of my other videos, you can incorporate eyes closed to make it more challenging. Other things that make it really challenging is changing head position. So, if I just turn my head side to side, you can see I bounce a little bit more. This is more challenging. Putting--moving head up and down. Right? Soon as you change head position, you have to work harder to stay upright on the BOSU.

And, for each of these exercises, you can do them maybe for 20, 30 seconds at a time--um--that really depends. I would start slow and work your way up. And, if you Google BOSU… Right? There’s tons of exercises that exist out there. But, this is another device that you can use for balance.

Let me know what you think. I hope it works out well, and you guys have a great day!