Crunches with Legs on Stability Ball

🎯 Abdominals🏋️ Exercise ballIsolation

How to do the crunches with legs on stability ball

  1. Lie on your back and place your feet up on a stability ball.
  2. Place your hands across your chest, or on either side of your head.
  3. Keeping the small of your back on the floor, raise your head, shoulders and chest up and off the floor.
  4. Pause for a moment contracting your abs and then return to the starting position.
  5. Note: Take your time and perform this exercise in a slow controlled manner.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.

Every exercise for:Abdominals

How this movement works

Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

The exercise ball is an unstable base on purpose. It shortens the leverage you can hold and demands constant small corrections, so the trunk works even when the movement is aimed elsewhere.

Every exercise using:Exercise ball

These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.