Exercise ball
soft elastic ball used in physical therapy and exercise
An exercise ball is a ball constructed of soft elastic, typically in 5 diameters of 10 cm increments, from 35 to 95 cm (14 to 37 in), and filled with air. The air pressure is changed by removing a valve stem and either filling with air or letting the ball deflate. It is most often used in physical therapy, athletic training and exercise. It can also be used for weight training.
The ball is also known by various other names, for instance: balance ball, birth ball, sitball, body ball, fitness ball, gym ball, gymnastic ball, physio ball, pilates ball, Pezzi ball, stability ball, Swedish ball, Swiss ball, therapy ball, yoga ball, or medicine ball.
History
The physical object known as a "Swiss Ball" was developed in 1963 by Aquilino Cosani, an Italian plastics manufacturer. He developed a process for moulding large puncture-resistant plastic balls. According to American physical therapist Joanne Posner-Mayer, the use of the exercise ball as a therapy tool probably begins with the Swiss pediatrician Dr. Elsbeth Köngan, an early advocate of the Bobath concept. Those balls, then known as "Pezzi balls", were first used in treatment programs for newborns and infants by Mary Quinton, a British physiotherapist working in Switzerland.
The public source identifies “Exercise ball” as soft elastic ball used in physical therapy and exercise. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Exercise, ball and soft.
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This entry incorporates text from “Exercise ball” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.