By Andrea Wright

“And … bounce!”

With that, a sea of 20 or so heads bobble up and down in the mirror’s reflection. I scramble to find my balance and flex my pelvis, trying to time my release to join the unison of bobbling heads. Each time I rise, I pray that the big red ball I’m sitting on is still there when I plop back down on it.

Today I’m taking a core conditioning class – my first experience with an exercise ball. The basis of core conditioning is to tone your body’s core, or torso muscles – your abs, back, pelvis and shoulders. Ideally, all of the body’s strength comes from this area, which provides a solid foundation to stabilize your extremities.

To begin, we sit upright on the ball and bounce up and down to energetic music, then slowly rotate our bodies around the ball in a circle. You can’t help but smile as you fly up and down like a child on a pogo stick.

The next move reminds me of an interpretive dance – holding the oversized, cushy ball in both hands while moving it in circles above our heads, up and down, side to side. We all giggle at the awkwardness of this move as I think, “Wow! This is fun and easy!” I didn’t realize this was just the warm-up.

Here’s where the whole balance thing is important – a skill I cannot boast about. The instructor tells us to sit “Japanese style” on the ball. This requires allowing your entire body to leave the ground as you sit on your heels on top of the ball. Once you are sitting (which, believe it or not, isn’t even the hard part), you lower your arms and kick the ball out from under you and then roll it back in, like a wild donkey. Luckily, I wasn’t the only person who couldn’t do this.

The rest of the positions require us to get down and dirty with the ball and the floor. I end up on my head, my back, my stomach, in swimming moves, in penguin moves, palms on the floor, toes on the floor, and nothing on the floor. Once, my whole body was on the floor after the woman next to me lost control of her ball and it headed straight toward mine, knocking it from under me like a game of marbles. I was just glad I wasn’t the first one to send a ball flying.

I am amazed at how many awkward and strenuous contortions my body can get into just by rolling around on a ball. I am also glad that I decided to wear long pants, as my legs were flailing around in all sorts of crazy directions.

The best part of the whole experience is that I was so concerned with not losing control of my ball, I sometimes forgot that I was exercising. Plus, the variation of roly-poly, child-like moves makes it much more fun than a basic sit-up or push-up. It wasn’t until I got home that I thought, “Why are my abs so sore? Oh yeah … that was the idea!”

So I recommend keeping a big, bouncy exercise ball handy, because it can make even the most grueling task (as, sadly, exercising is often for me) fun, new and exciting. I’ll be back next week.