Filed Under (Core Stability) by Rick Kaselj on 20-04-2009
POP! Goes the Stability Ball! Crash Goes the Client.
If you have any of your clients using a stability ball at home or at work, you need to check if their stability ball has been recalled.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has sent out a recall of over 3,000,000 stability balls. These stability balls were made by EB Brands and were under the brand names of Bally Total Fitness, Everlast, Valeo and Body Fit Fitness Balls.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has had 47 complaints of people that have received fractures or bruises from using their stability.
If you go to the website of the manufacture of stability balls in questions, they report that reason why stability balls have been exploding is:
People have been over inflating them.
As a fitness professional, have you ever been asked by your manager or members to inflate the stability balls because they feel a little flat even through they are the specified height?
Next time, let them know that in the USA, people have fractured bones or bruised themselves when they have over inflate a stability ball.
I know with lower end stability balls they don’t hold their shape and sink. They feel soft. People want them to feel firm again so they pump them up but this affects the stability ball’s safety.
I have had experience with stability balls bursting on me. I had one spontaneously burst at a facility I was working at. It popped in half like a balloon. Luckily, it was not in use and in the corner.
The second time a stability ball popped on me, I was teaching my Advance Core Stability course and had the stability ball that I was using puncture. I was wondering why the exercise was getting easier and easier. I figured out there was a hole in the ball and I had slow and gradually ride on the ball to the floor. It was an anti-burst stability ball so it slowly leaked, compared to exploding.
If you look at the US Consumer Product Safety Commission press release on the exploding stability balls, they recommend that you go and download updated instructions on how to safely inflate a stability ball. It was Saturday night so I was into reading stability ball warnings.
