Comparative electromiographic analysis of convensional abdominal exercise with gymnastic ball

The aim of this study is to compare abdominal exercises using conventional gymnastic and the abdominal ball. The intensity of each abdominal exercise is analyzed through electromyography. The muscles analyzed were: rectus abdominis and external obliquus. One of the factors that help mainten a good posture is the stabilizing of the trunk muscles, known as "CORE". They are muscles of the abdominal region that work together, to form a support for the spine (abdominal transverse, external oblique and internal oblique, recto-abdominal and multifidi), when they fail in their function, the spine becomes vulnerable and susceptible to injury. Twenty volunteers took part in this study, 10 men and 10 women, with an average age of 25, all physically active for at least three months. They performed series of each of the exercises for a 15s period. In conventional exercises we observed a high electrical activity (RMS) of the right and left abdominal muscles for both groups, which corroborates the results of a large number of authors who stress that these abdominal exercises are very efficient in recruitment of the rectus muscle. With the abdominal exercise on the ball, the results also demonstrated a good activity of the rectus abdominis, although with a lower electromyographic signal than with the conventional one, but the oblique muscles showed superior abdominal activity. These results led to the conclusion that when the focus is to work the abdominal rectus muscle with more intensity the conventional exercise is more indicated and when the intention is to focus on more intensity on the obliques the abdominal exercise with ball seems to be the mostindicated.