BOSU: The Only Fitness Tool You’ll Ever Need

By Kelly Turner on July 30th, 2009

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If you’ve been reading, you know I’m not a gimmick person.  Fitness gadgets and fads don’t fly with me.  Quite frankly, you don’t even need any equipment to get a good workout.  But if I had to pick the single best piece of fitness equipment on the market, it would be the BOSU.

This little dome is like half stability ball, half balance disc.  It has an inflatable side (blue side) you can stand on, or for more of a challenge you can flip it over, flat side (black) up, and create an even more unstable surface.

Stability training is important to build up your lateral support and strength of your body to hit those hard to get  inner and outer thigh muscles, and stabilizing muscles around the knee and ankle joints to prevent injury and improve performance.  In addition, anytime you are in an unstable state, your core becomes engaged to keep you balanced, training more muscles in less time.

The BOSU can be used to train any part of the body:

Upper Body:Use either the blue or black side for more challenging push ups or you can raise it over your head during Burpees.

Core/Abs: Using the BOSU in general engages your core, but you can target your core specifically by using the BOSU under your arms or feet for planks and side planks, or under your lower back for any number of kinds of crunches.  You can also place the BOSU under your hips for back extensions, and oblique crunches.

Lower Body:  Any lower body exercise you do, you can do on the BOSU and engage more muscle groups.  You can use the blue side to do calf raises and squats, or you can lunge onto it, or off of it for great results.  You can also flip the BOSU over and stand on the black side for even more of a challenge when doing squats.

I probably use the BOSU more than any other piece of equipment with the clients I train.  Its the ultimate piece of equipment for functional training (training your body in the way it was designed to improve everyday performance) and is perfect for any fitness level.

BOSUs run about $89.00- $110.00, but you can always check craigslist.com for a used one.  To learn more about the BOSU, check out the website at http://www.bosufitness.com/.