From Avoding Exercise Balls (Like a Plague) to Discovering Their Adult Ballet Learning Breakthrough Potential

Exercise balls used to be the enemy - read how they’ve turned into a friend. Picture by Progressing Ballet Technique

I gave up on exercise balls a long time ago. So how does this go together with my recent Progressing Ballet Certification?? PBT is like all about the balls. Well, get ready for a good story.

In fact, I not only gave up on them - I became highly critical of them and completely passionately refused using them in my own training and in teaching/training others. (I am talking the big balls that you can sit on - also called Swiss balls, or gymnastics balls, depending on where you live).

The tide that turned against exercise balls - and the Circus Shows

It was about 20 years ago, during my years as a strength & conditioning coach in professional hockey, when the tide started to turn against the exercise ball fashion.

Until then, they were part of a top-notch-forefront of strength & conditioning hype. The big promise: By introducing balls, you would create an unstable environment and therefore increase the stability demands on the core. It would add a nice higher progression to your usual core strength exercises. Meaning, you would get athletes with even stronger cores who could withstand all wiggling and unstable situations in their specific sport.

At least, that was the theory.

But the thing with humans and physical training, as with many other areas of life: 1) More does not necessarily equal better. 2) The law of diminishing returns.

So at some point, the first smart and evidence-based S&C coaches realized: Regarding 1): The training on the exercise balls did not transfer to better athletic performance. It created athletes that got better at exercises on exercise balls, but they did not get stronger in sport-specific situation. And re. 2): Even if they got more skilled at working on an unstable surface, and a certain instability was part of their sport (like hockey players on skates) – the gains from working on balls weren’t worth the time and effort.

Because here is the thing: When you are a high-performing athlete, the biggest challenge is to choose how to allocate your training time. You want the biggest bang for your buck. So if something makes you stronger but that additional strength doesn’t do much for you in your typical sport-specific scenarios, then that’s not a good investment of time.

There was another problem specifically with the phenomenon of exercise balls: Things started to turn into a circus show. We know how it goes, right? There is social media, and at some point some guy will start doing handstands, or a jump sequence, or a pistol squat, on a ball. There is always a cool trick to add, and the whole exercise ball training idea turned into some sort of acrobatics boot camp. It looked cool, but it was pointless.

And even worse, guess what – the whole circus number started to drive injuries, because big hockey guys were falling off exercise balls, twisting ankles, and breaking bones.

So then a few more renowned coaches started to move away from exercises balls, and I decided I was on the same page. There were better ways to train, and better ways to build core strength progressions. So that was it, I was officially out of the exercise ball camp for good. Never looked at them again.

The judgment that turned against me

Fast forward a few years later, a few years into my starting ballet. I come across a method called Progressing Ballet Technique, it looks really interesting from a movement pattern and neuroplasticity perspective, but I also see exercise balls, so I’m like “naah, thank you, Imma pass on this one”. In my head, I had decided I was done with exercise, so my judgmental self decided to ignore any method that used time. So it goes for several years (!).

Then, fast forward a few years again, to this summer. By now, I’m 44, tons of personal development work behind me, like, identifying my limiting beliefs, catching my subconscious judgments, noticing where I make assumptions without actually checking the evidence, just because they fit my worldview, and just because I think I know better anyway.

So I’m like “Well, maybe I can get over my rigid-judgmental self and get to know this PBT thing better, despite the exercise balls. Worst case is one day spent in a Zoom workshop, and I’d have some material for writing critical PBT Instagram posts.” (I was actually thinking that, that’s how bad and naturally judgmental I am.)

So I sign up for a PBT teacher certification workshop. (I do have an exercise ball at home, btw, and always have, mainly because my son likes them.) Workshop day arrives, I am all ready, equipment at hand. No expectations on my side, but also no bad feelings any more. In fact, I feel a deep curiosity, a happy anticipation to dedicate a whole day to learning, experimenting, embodying.

The joy of getting over yourself

Turns out the workshop would become one of my highlights this year. A complete jackpot, and I am still processing and integrating. I think that maybe for the first time, I found something that connects my background in S&C training, my intense study of the brain and neuroplasticity, my ambition around skill/movement development, my love for ballet, and my passion for supporting other late adult ballet starters in achieving way more than they thought they could achieve.

But back to the exercise balls, let me drive this super important point home.

I realized that the way PBT looks at exercises balls is different than what I knew from my S&C coaching times: Whereas back then, it was to make an exercise HARDER – PBT uses the balls to make exercises EASIER. “Easier” in a brain-activity-sense of: Balls are used to provide support and to make the awareness of the body’s center more clear. And THAT’s, to me, the magic of why working with the ball PBT-style made such a huge difference for me when I went back to my regular ballet class after the workshop. The ball, because of its round shape, immediately tells you when your weight placement is off, or when your turnout comes from a wrong place, or when your pelvis is lifted. So it makes you realize things that are usually much harder to notice otherwise. Plus it supports your body weight, so in a way you’re introducing a regression in order to learn better movement quality. Which, btw, is a principle in many other effective types of bodywork – Feldenkrais’ big thing for working on the floor was to remove gravity from the movement learning equation. Or the other way round, for the people in the back: You can’t learn a new movement pattern, or improve movement quality, while supporting your full body weight. It’s just too much to coordinate for the brain, and it will prioritize keeping you from falling at the expense of actually learning what you want to learn.

This was a huge lightbulb moment for me: You can use an exercise ball to make life easier and not harder. No circus. Placement, baby. Halleluja!

So anyway, why am I sharing this story? Well, first, because I think PBT has amazing potential to help adult ballet starters feel and learn faster what they need for their ballet progress. (And if you want to work with me – YAY!)

But more important, because this experience is such a prime example of how we can block ourselves from progressing and thriving in whatever we do – just because we hold on to experiences and judgments from the past. I had made up my mind on exercise balls – not realizing that the balls were not the problem. The problem was HOW they were used.

It’s also a good example of how making assumptions from afar can kill joy and progress. I assumed all kinds of things about PBT, without actually checking my assumptions. So most often, instead of making up your own stories and judgments about something, it makes way more sense to dive in and try it instead – at the risk of coming out disappointed. (Or confirmed in your negative judgments, which is also fine, right? At least material for critical Instagram posts hehe.) There is always a way to keep the investment reasonable – so go ahead and give it a fair shot. After that you can still criticize as much as you want – or realize that you have been wrong all along, and that you discovered something fun or amazing or inspiring. This kind of dipping your toes in and giving it a try will leave you much more liberated, better informed, and in stronger connection/appreciation of what’s going on in the world around you.

Have you ever stood in your own way like that?

Anyway, if you do want to work with me – try it once, and then never again if you don’t like it! Book your lesson here. I can assure you that my approach to PBT will be infused with even more brain-enhancing principles and I combine it with Evelyn-Hart-inspired turnout work. Currently, I only offer online 1:1 lessons (or in person if you’re in Toronto), as over the past months, I have myself re-experienced the power and magic of focused, indivdualized 1:1 work. And even one session will give you enough input to work on on your own and feel a difference in your regular ballet class. Or, if you prefer to try PBT without my guidance (*sniff*) and at a lower investment, then you can get 50% off of your monthly PBT membership fee with my referral link! The PBT membership site gives you tons of instructional videos and workouts, and you can go entirely on your own pace and schedule. And no, I won’t be offended 😃 Happy to facilitate whatever works best for you! (Full disclosure: When you sign up through my referral link, I get CAD 10 off of my monthly PBT teacher membership.) Find my teacher profile in the PBT directory here.