Being a former gymnast, I’d like to think my balance and stability is still on point. In reality, though, I’m not as nimble as I used to be (she says as a mid-twenty-something), so I’m always up for a challenge to build that stability and get stronger. During an interview with The Ultimate Surfer semifinalist Malia Ward I had last month, she mentioned that BOSU ball squats help her work on balance, but they’re not just any BOSU ball squats: she does them on the flat side of the ball, making the surface particularly unstable.
Ward inspired me when she said she performs these BOSU ball squats — weighted and bodyweight — with twists. “That helps me practice for when I want to turn my body on a wave,” she explained. Sure enough, I needed to test these twists out for myself. They challenged not only my core strength, but also my lower- and upper-body strength (I felt it in my upper body when holding a dumbbell). And don’t even get me started about the stability aspect. Brutal!
This move is advanced; however, you can modify it by doing the twisting squat on the ground, which still requires you to engage your core and channel your stability. I’ve incorporated the BOSU ball squat twists into my workout circuits or added them as finishers. I don’t own a BOSU ball, so I’ve been utilizing my Terra Core. It’s similar though is more of a cylinder shape and has a wider range of uses.
Ahead, check out footage of how I did bodyweight and weighted BOSU ball squat twists on either side of my Terra Core — because I couldn’t just balance on the flat surface from the get-go. I had to work my way up. I did not shy away from this challenge despite the difficulty, and I learned a new move in the process that I’ll keep doing in workouts to come.