CORE VALUES
You might want to rethink using a stability ball as your desk chair
If you bought a stability ball to use at your home work station, you might want to sit down for this reality check — on a traditional chair. Claims that stability balls will strengthen your core have little backing in research. In fact, sitting on a stability ball, also known as a balance ball, exercise ball or Swiss ball, could have detrimental effects.
Manufacturers often promote stability balls as both workout equipment and furniture, claiming that using them as desk chairs improves posture and facilitates a core-strengthening workout.
The hype seems to have worked. Sales of balance balls grew 67 per cent from January through July 2020, compared with the previous year, according to figures gathered by the NPD Group, a market research company.
Balancing on an unstable surface does require engagement of your core — your abdominal, lower back and pelvic muscles. And engaging your core helps it grow stronger, which should improve posture and lessen back pain. The idea of gaining similar benefits by using balance balls as desk chairs doesn't seem far-fetched.
But it's not a theory backed by science, according to Brian Lowe, a research industrial engineer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
After examining the issue, Lowe and colleagues published a commentary in the American Journal of Health Promotion in March 2016 that ended, “Although the existing body of literature is small, and the studies have limitations ... the literature to date does not suggest significant health benefits to justify unstable sitting as a health promotion practice.”
Diane Gregory, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., was an author of one of the studies cited in the commentary. That paper concluded “prolonged sitting on a stability ball does not greatly alter the manner in which an individual sits, yet it appears to increase the level of discomfort.
“The amount of movement that these unstable surfaces allow for really is not so much more so that the benefits outweigh the potential consequences,” Gregory said in a telephone interview.
Another negative found in one of the studies cited by Lowe is “spinal shrinkage,” a decrease in spine height due to flattening of the discs between the vertebrae. “Increased movement of the spine, if beneficial, should reduce disk shrinkage because the beneficial movement would increase fluid exchange within the intervertebral disc,” Lowe said.
“The loss in spinal height due to intervertebral disc shrinkage calls into question any benefits on the spine.”
Lowe also notes “anecdotal evidence among ergonomics professionals of people falling from the free-rolling stability balls.” Balls that are set on a base with a backrest should lower that risk.
And what about the idea that balancing on a stability ball will help you burn extra calories, which is sometimes cited as a benefit? Two studies that measured the difference between sitting on a regular chair and on a stability ball concluded that the difference was approximately four calories per hour, Lowe wrote, which works out to only about 30 calories over eight-hours.
None of this is to say that stability balls don't belong in fitness routines. But, as Gregory points out, no one is expected to participate in any workout that requires core activation all day. “We don't want to have a muscle activated and then stay activated for a period of time.”
Tessa Elliott, a physical therapist in Atlanta, says the balls can help patients build endurance in their deep abdominal muscles.
“Using an unstable surface allows those muscles to be turned on.”
Elliott was part of a team at Armstrong State University in Savannah, Ga., that compared stability balls with desk chairs. The 2016 study, concluded that sitting on a stability ball did not reduce lower back pain, though it did improve endurance in the muscles that control forward and backward movement. According to Elliott: “The bigger picture is that a healthier way to sit is varying what we sit on,” she said.
So, she suggested, an at-home worker could switch between, say, a traditional chair, a stability ball, a backless stool and standing (standing all day, however, is also detrimental). “It's also important to pay attention to posture and get up and move as often as possible, even if it is just for a few seconds.”
Gregory isn't averse to people using the balls. “I would say, maybe work up to an hour,” she said, “but at the end of the day, I don't think anyone should be sitting longer than an hour, even in a fancy office chair.”
Get up and move around often, she added.
“That's going to be so much more beneficial than anything you're sitting on to begin with.”