medicine ball应该和一般的健身球有点区别吧？它用在康复训练当中，比健身球小得多，2公斤左右，可以持在手中做练习。

对，21楼说的正确。他是小球，我弄错了。不好意思啊。
16楼图片上很清楚，男的手持的那玩意就是。呵呵

再来几个图片

Bosu Exercises

Using Swiss Balls To Build Core Stability – what are the advantages and disadvantages?

In the past 10 years large inflatable plastic balls variously known as Swiss Balls, fit balls or stability balls have become de rigueur gym equipment. Ranks of them line the back walls of class studios, a couple always lurk in the abs and stretch area and, increasingly, they are kept in the free weights room. They will also be found in any self-respecting sports physiotherapy clinic.

Over a very similar period of time, “core stability” has invaded the world of recreational sport and fitness, transforming traditional approaches to training and keep fit at all levels of aspiration. And in the realm of core stability, Swiss balls have become indispensable, almost synonymous with the very concept. If you are serious about core conditioning, you work out using a Swiss ball. But can these cheap, cheerful, oversized ‘space hoppers’ justify their popularity in terms of effectiveness?

Core Stability - injury free performance reports on several recent sports science experiments into the role Swiss Balls can play in achieving real improvements in trunk strength. The research sets out the types of exercises in which the use of a Swiss Ball is advantageous – and those types of exercises where the use of such equipment is at best of dubious value, and at worse potentially dangerous.

The research concludes that Swiss Balls are of undoubted value as part of a properly-planned core stability program, but that such equipment is often used in an uncritical fashion.

The chapter ends with a discussion of which exercises are most usefully performed with a Swiss Ball, complete with full diagrams and suggestions as to the most appropriate number of sets and reps.

Pilates Conditioning – are you practising it correctly? And is your instructor up to scratch?

Fitness Pilates is a method of exercise and physical movement designed primarily to stabilise the trunk (the “core”), producing more effective stretching, strengthening and balancing of the body.

Through systematic practice of specific exercises coupled with focused breathing patterns, Pilates has proven itself invaluable as a fitness endeavour and an important adjunct to professional sports training. It was developed in the 1920s by the German boxer, circus performer and exercise innovator Joseph Pilates, and began to gain a following when dancers he was working with discovered it could create long, lean muscles and a strong, streamlined physique.

Pilates’ system didn't really hit the big time, however, until the 1990s.

After years of high-impact, feel-the-burn fitness workouts, there was great appeal in a slower, safer approach to health and wellness. Fitness Pilates can condition the body from head to toe with a no- to low-impact approach suitable for all ages and abilities. It requires patience, attention to detail with your body and consistent practice, but results are guaranteed to follow if one sticks at it and does it right.

In Core Stability - injury free performance, you’ll learn exactly how to use Pilates safely as a method of enhancing your body’s core stability. And you’ll learn the core principles behind the proper practice of Pilates – so you’ll know how to recognise a good Pilates instructor from a bad one.

Because when practised badly, Pilates routines can lead to pain and long-term injury – the very opposite of what its creator intended.

Building Core Stability – practical training menus for every athlete

Within the repertoire of core stability there is a large range of exercises, the suitability of which will vary according to the injury and therapeutic needs of each individual.

There are three major groups of exercise:

    * those focusing on getting the small deep lying stabilising muscles (such as the lower abdominals and deep spinal muscles) to work properly. These exercises are often taken from clinical Pilates.
    * static bodyweight exercises that concentrate on developing stability and/or strength endurance in certain postures. These need you to learn how simultaneously to work your small stabiliser muscles and the larger mobiliser muscles. One popular example is the ‘plank’.
    * traditional dynamic strength exercises for the main movement muscles of the trunk, often performed on the floor or Swiss ball.

While sports therapists use a variety of approaches, it is common to start you off working on the first type of exercise (how to use the smaller stability muscles properly) and then progress to more strength-based work as your injury improves.

Core stability work is by no means confined to the rehab clinic, however. Sports physicians, physiotherapists and strength and conditioning coaches also recommend that their clients perform regular core stability or trunk strength exercises to prevent injury. The rationale for prophylactic training is that increased recruitment of the stabiliser muscles and increased strength of the prime movers (main movement muscles) will carry over into better posture and more control, both in daily life and in sporting movements.

So it is very likely you will have come across some core stability exercises through your local sports club, gym or any other general training context. Most of us tend to have a list of three or four of these exercises that we include in our workouts each week.

While this prehabilitative strategy is well intentioned it has two limitations.

    * The first is behavioural. Core stability exercises can quite quickly become ‘bore stability’! It takes self-discipline to do 20 to 30 minutes of the same exercises three or more times a week over a long period, so most of us lapse, or at best skimp on this part of the workout after a while.

    * The second limitation is physiological. The key training principles of specificity and progression apply to core work in the same way that they do to any other aspect of physical fitness. It is quite common for an athlete to perform the same core routine over a long period and get very good at four or five movements or ‘holds’. But teach the same athlete a new core exercise and they will find it difficult, simply because it’s a new stimulus. The message is that progression and variety are key to optimising benefits of a strengthening programme.

For these reasons, the scheme of ‘core training menus presented in Core Stability Training aims to overcome the problems of non-compliance and lack of challenge. In so doing, it provides a system where an individual can follow a prophylactic or rehabilitative core stability and strengthening programme using a wide variety of movements to maximise adaptations for improvement, and which muscle groups are targeted for training.

The system is designed for those who have already developed some basic skill in using their all-important lower abdominal stability muscles (transversus abdominis) and who are familiar with a number of core exercises.

NB: this is a challenging programme, covering all of the trunk and pelvic muscles, and running from basic recruitment to very advanced strength movements.

The training system contains 10 exercise menus, each using a single piece of training apparatus. A menu contains three to four exercises, which between them target most trunk and pelvic muscles. Some of the exercises involve resistance, some bodyweight, some a simply about muscle recruitment.

Within a menu the difficulty of exercises varies; a couple of the menus are very advanced (and therefore not within the competence of all readers). Coaches, therapists and individuals should set the number of sets and repetitions for each exercise according to the normal principles of training fatigue and overload.

If you are in doubt about how many sets and reps you should be performing, consult a qualified trainer or (if recovering from injury) a sports therapist, so that you are not working pointlessly or, worse, in an unsafe manner likely to lead to injury.

Why you should start to apply the principles of functional training to the vital trunk muscles
I would like to set you thinking about how much time in your training programme is spent developing the trunk, and how much thought is put into the exercises you use to train this very important area of the body.

Your free report is the first step to turning around your training effectiveness. You’ll learn how to ensure that there are no weak links in your core. We will show how to create a functional strength programme for the trunk that will have an immediate and positive effect on your athletic performance.

The steps to increased power

Your special report reveals vital factors that are neglected or overlooked in many training programmes. Here are four of them:

1. Exercises should be performed in a standing position: most of your trunk exercises should be performed standing up, since this is the position of most athletic movements. While you're standing the exercises involve all the trunk-and hip-stabiliser muscles and not just the abdominals or low back in isolation.

2. Training should target endurance, strength and power: The trunk muscles are important for maintaining good posture and spinal alignment. This is a 24 hour, 7 days a week task - in other words, the trunk muscles have to perform this function all day every day and thus must have good endurance. The trunk muscles are also integral in power movements, e.g., throwing, jumping and hitting, and so strength and power must be developed. Thus, a trunk programme should contain a mix of low intensity/high repetition exercises with high-intensity and plyometric-type movements.

3. Exercises must be multi-directional: The trunk can (1) flex forward and extend back, (2) flex to the left and right side, (3) rotate about its centre, and (4) perform any combination of the above movements in three planes. Exercises that integrate these three planes will provide the biggest challenge and benefits to an athlete looking to develop functional core strength.

4. Trunk exercise programmes must be progressive: you’ll learn how to start with simple movements and progress to multi-plane movements when the basics are secure. You’ll start with low-intensity exercises and add resistance to the movements once the technique is mastered and strength is improved. Then you’ll progress your positions: from lying to sitting, to kneeling to standing, to standing on one leg, to standing on one leg on an unstable base. From slow and static exercises, you’ll progress to power exercises.

To achieve these goals, we explain how to separate trunk exercises into various categories, and scale each exercise for difficulty within each category. By selecting exercises from each category you will train each kind of movement the trunk performs. You’ll start with the easier exercises in each category and progress safely and effectively.

功能性训练和功能性体能是值得关注的研究焦点。
虽然来源于康复专业，但是对运动训练是否也具有新的意义？是否是换汤不换药的新名词？
有兴趣的可以进一步探讨

厉害
   我是游泳专项的学生，对这个核心力量非常关注。游泳的教练员经常提出一个问题，他们训练他的运动员，在陆上力量上取得很大的突破，但是运动员在水上训练，比赛中却表现不出来，或者说提高极其微少，我觉得就是核心力量没有注意练好。游泳运动在水中是找不到一个稳定的支撑点来发力的，那躯干的稳定与否就是力量传达的关键，很多教练注重了四肢的力量训练，但忽略了躯干的力量，或者是躯干的稳定性力量。所以我觉得制约中国游泳的关键就在这里。

                                                                个人意见欢迎指点