Fitness Challenge: Weighted Ball

Kettlebells are the 'it' equipment in many gyms, but I find a weighted exercise ball much more useful. You can do a lot of the same exercises as with kettlebells, snapping them from a squat to shoulder height, swinging them between your legs in a figure 8.

But you can also use them for your obliques, twisting from side to side. Or you can put the weighted ball under one hand and do push ups, then roll the ball to the other hand for more push ups. The ball is great for getting into the chair position, and holding overhead. You can hold the ball with your elbows out and raise and lower. A ball with handles gives you more options, like standing on one foot, with other straight out behind you. You keep the ball in your opposite hand and touch the ground, then straighten up. Exhale Spa has a Core Fusion Sport class using a weighted ball.

Fitness Challenge, Day 95

Yoga on the beach is a wonderful vacation treat, but if you are traveling to a city, you can find outdoor yoga when it is warm out.

In New York City, Bryant Park has outdoor yoga in late spring through summer. And Prospect Park, in Brooklyn offers yoga on summer evenings. Even better than enjoying the opportunity to exercise in a park is that these yoga classes are free. Exhale Spa in the Gansevoort Hotel recently had a free yoga day that was not quite as relaxing; we were in an outdoor plaza, surrounded by traffic, trucks unloading and tourists snapping photos. I am looking forward to my upcoming trip to Dallas, for the Family Travel Conference, where the new Klyde Warren Park will have free yoga classes by The Dallas Yoga Center. Sun salutations to the actual sun. It doesn't get much better than that.