3M fitness balls recalled by CPSC

  • Thread starter Thread starter LowlyPion
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Ball Exercise
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
Sign up Log in
16 replies · 5K views
Biology news on Phys.org

Discussion

The problem only came to light after 3million had been sold when somebody actually used one for exercise rather than just buying it and putting it in the cupboard.
 
mgb_phys said:
The problem only came to light after 3million had been sold when somebody actually used one for exercise rather than just buying it and putting it in the cupboard.

:smile: Does anyone really use those things for exercise? The only people I've ever known to actually use those balls have been pregnant women who use them while in labor as something to lean on.
 
Moonbear said:
:smile: Does anyone really use those things for exercise? The only people I've ever known to actually use those balls have been pregnant women who use them while in labor as something to lean on.

I use mine every morning...great for sit-ups, no lower back strain! You do need a pretty good sense of balance, it's surprisingly easy to fall off.
 
How do you do a sit up on a ball? The only thing I hurt when doing a sit up is my bony butt bones on the hard floor. I also was warned to stop doing sit ups because it contributed to my abdominal muscles splitting apart, I had to have surgery to have them stitched back together. :bugeye: What I kept trying to exercise away was due to too much exercise. He said it was common in women that did a lot of sit ups. I think an over sized Evo Child greatly contributed to it. But after the surgery I had a completely flat abdomen and the back pain stopped, which he told me was due to the muscles being split and not giving me proper support. Right or wrong, the surgery fixed everything.
 
Evo said:
How do you do a sit up on a ball? The only thing I hurt when doing a sit up is my bony butt bones on the hard floor. I also was warned to stop doing sit ups because it contributed to my abdominal muscles to splitting apart, I had to have surgery to have them stitched back together. :bugeye:

Well the ball isn't blown up all the way, so it's very soft. It's easy on bony butt bones too...but split abdominal muscles really sounds awful :frown:!
 
lisab said:
Well the ball isn't blown up all the way, so it's very soft. It's easy on bony butt bones too...but split abdominal muscles really sounds awful :frown:!
I am amazed by your balance! I could only do sit ups on a completely deflated ball, even then, I injured myself. :-p That has to be very different from regular sit ups. I wonder if that can prevent the tearing of the abdominal muscles?
 
Evo said:
I also was warned to stop doing sit ups because it contributed to my abdominal muscles splitting apart, I had to have surgery to have them stitched back together. :bugeye: What I kept trying to exercise away was due to too much exercise. He said it was common in women that did a lot of sit ups. I think an over sized Evo Child greatly contributed to it.

Wow, you must have been doing hours upon hours of sit ups for that to happen. Either that or you were pregnant or just recently had a kid when it happened? I know plenty of females who do loads of sit ups on a daily basis but I've never heard of splitting abdominals! :eek:
 
Evo said:
I am amazed by your balance! I could only do sit ups on a completely deflated ball, even then, I injured myself. :-p That has to be very different from regular sit ups. I wonder if that can prevent the tearing of the abdominal muscles?

The balance thing is tricky. You have to stay in the "sweet spot"...it can be humbling :redface:.

Don't know that I would try doing any sort of abdominal exercise if I had been through what you've been through! Besides, you tummy's already flat...you should stop while you're ahead.
 
NBAJam100 said:
Wow, you must have been doing hours upon hours of sit ups for that to happen. Either that or you were pregnant or just recently had a kid when it happened? I know plenty of females who do loads of sit ups on a daily basis but I've never heard of splitting abdominals! :eek:
Most women do not realize it, apparently. I had no idea, it was just by accident that my doctor and I were talking one day and I was complaining that I could never get my stomach as flat as I thought it should be. I guess most people wouldn't notice, it doesn't make a huge difference in appearance, but at that time I was stick thin and I thought a woman's stomach should actually be curved inward when seen in profile, not a bump. It's only now that I realize those models were sucking their stomachs in when being photographed. That and the fact that my best friend had a perfect torso. She was a natural bikini model.
 
lisab said:
The balance thing is tricky. You have to stay in the "sweet spot"...it can be humbling :redface:.

Don't know that I would try doing any sort of abdominal exercise if I had been through what you've been through! Besides, you tummy's already flat...you should stop while you're ahead.
Yeah, id second that as well. With the exercise ball you can go through a much wider range of motion (leaning backwards to reach different areas of the abominals that you can't reach if you were laying on the floor.) If your abdominals were torn once, id think you would want to limit the range you take them through, especially while straining them. If floor exercises are tough on them, I would think ball exercises would be more intense because of the balance aspect, you are straining more parts of the abs in that aspect as well.
 
I don't think split abdominal muscles is at all common. Chances are that your situps didn't cause it either, just exacerbated something that happened by other means.

Though, no, your stomach isn't supposed to look sunken in either. And, for some people, no matter what sort of diet they are on and how many sit ups or other abdominal exercises they do, they will never have 6-pack abs. There are tendons between the sections of the rectus abdominis muscle that are what define the 6-pack look, and there are a lot of individual differences in how distinct these tendons are. Some people are even missing them entirely. They could build up their abdominal muscles nicely, but will not achieve that 6-pack look.

I think you already have to have pretty good muscle tone to balance on a ball. That's why I don't think they end up used as much as people plan to use them...once they realize they need to be balanced and coordinated, they give up on them. :biggrin:
 
Ball exercises are good for lots of people for the same reason that free-weights are better than machine-exercises - they require you to use a lot of ancillary muscles for fine control. Can you bench press 200# on a weight machine? Let's see you do the same press with free-weights. :devil: This is the reason that ball-exercises are popular. They let you get a fuller workout with lighter weights (or no weights if you are using your body as the resistive mass), contributing to better total fitness.
 
To MB - Yes, most commonly you see the muscles split from pregnancy. I don't know how much study has been done on situps as a culprit, although a quick google search has blogs saying that their doctor warned them that situps could cause separation. Thinking back, it was actually my OB GYN "before" I got pregnant that told me I seemed to have split these muscles and he asked me if I did a lot of situps. He was the one that told me that it was a frequent problem. I do not know if that was just his experience with a yuppy patient base, or if it was confirmed by any studies. He turned out to have been correct, though. It wasn't until after I had my second child and it really got bad that I had the surgery.
 
Three million fitness balls made in China were voluntarily recalled Thursday due to reports that they can pop unexpectedly if overinflated.

How to tell when the ball is overinflated.


 
Last edited by a moderator:
edward said:
How to tell when the ball is overinflated.



I wonder how much of the ball you have to find in order to get your refund off the recall?
 
Last edited by a moderator: