Using a Medicine Ball or Yoga Ball To Do Ab Workouts

There are lots of ab workouts you can do to tone your abs and burn belly fat.  But some of the best abdominal exercises you can do involve using a medicine ball, yoga ball or what is called a swiss ball. I've even heard people call it a pilates ball or a fitness ball.

Regardless of what you choose to call it, yoga balls are a great way to trim belly fat and tone your abdominal muscles.  Working out with a variety of yoga ball and medicine ball ab workouts will train and target your abdominal muscles.

• Medicine balls are the balls that weigh around 7 pounds or more, they are about the size of a basketball.
• But fitness balls or yoga balls have a diameter of around 3 feet and are filled with air as opposed to heavy sand.

Fitness balls are sometimes used as a slanted sitting device for crunches and other exercises and medicine balls are used as a device for adding resistance when doing crunches. Generally you would hold a medicine ball in front of your stomach or chest, and the medicine ball would add additional resistance on the abdominal muscles.

1. Exercise Ball Crunch - The exercise ball crunch is an ab exercise that looks very similar to the woman pictured above. Position yourself so that you are sitting down on the yoga ball and do a crunch with your hands touching the side of your head. You want to have a balanced posture when you are doing crunches on an exercise ball.
   
2. Yoga Ball Core Roll - This can be done by getting on a workout mat and staying in the push up position. Raise your feet on top of the yoga ball while maintaining the push up position and crunch your legs forward in a way that rolls the ball toward you and your knees should be moving toward your stomach.
   
3. Yoga Ball Passes - Can be done by laying on a workout mat, lay on your back with the yoga ball between your feet. Make sure your body is parallel with the floor and keep the yoga ball between your feet. Lift your arms and head in a crunching motion and simultaneously lift the yoga ball with your feet. At the climax of the crunch, grab the yoga ball with your hands and continue alternating from your hands to your feet.
   
4. Yoga Ball Leg Lifts - This exercise can be done by laying flat on your back with the yoga ball between your feet. Slowly lift the ball about with your feet and try to lift the ball about 4 inches over the floor. You can choose to do reps of this exercise or you can decide to hold the yoga ball up for 10 seconds.

One of my favorite ways to use a medicine ball when doing an ab workout is to do crunches on a decline bench.  You can do it yourself by holding the medicine ball to your chest or your could have a friend help you out by gently throwing the ball toward your upper abdomen as you complete each rep.  As you complete each rep, throw the medicine ball back to your friend so that he can quickly throw it back to you (in a gentle way).  If you do this right, you will receive the medicine ball just before you go back down into the decline position.  If this sounds too difficult or if you don't have a partner, its perfectly fine to just do medicine ball crunches by yourself.