Argos Value Range Gym Ball

You may have seen from some of my reviews that I have been healthy eating and trying to lose weight for several months now, if not more. I have lost a few stone (5 or 6) over the past year or two and I have got back in the swing of it recently in a bid to ensure that I do not put any of the weight back on. I have a gym membership now and I like to try and visit 3 times a week, however, sometimes I just don’t have the motivation to leave my lovely home on my day off, other than to go to the park with my nieces and nephews, and so I have lots of items at home that I can use to exercise. This includes free weights, Xbox Kinect, a Wii, and a host of other small items that make it simple for me to exercise at home. My largest, without a doubt, piece of exercise equipment is a gym ball.

I have owned one gym ball before this one, however, when you accidentally run over a large piece of sharp plastic and it punctures a large hole you know its time to get a new one, which I did! I picked up this Argos value gym ball for just £4.99. The colour of this is white which of course isn’t the most interesting colour but I was short on cash and didn’t want to give up my balancing and strengthening exercises so I took the plunge. Really this ball is very similar to the one I had before in size so there wasn’t a problem really with me having to buy another one.

This ball is 55cm in diameter which is perfect for me, as I’m 5 foot 5 inches, but not so ideal for my husband who needs a larger gym ball at over 6 foot. This exercise ball has a maximum user weight recommendation of 125kg (19st 10lbs) which is plenty for me, particularly now I’ve lost so much weight!

My main purpose for using my gym ball is for doing exercises on. I do sit ups, sometimes squats and then I use it to see how long I can maintain my balance for. I sometimes roll along it on my stomach too and stretch out before doing other exercises.

This ball can also be used to aid people undergoing physiotherapy, however, I have no need to use it for this purpose (fortunately). Well, apart from maintaining good balance and working on it too which I’m sure people undergoing physiotherapy will also work on.

This ball was simple to pump up using the pump supplied, however, the pump was flimsy and cheap and I soon replaced that with something better as I felt like the pump was about to break at any minute and a lot more work was involved when using the original pump than with the one I have now. I find that I need to add some air to this every week or so at the moment but potentially as this gets more worn it may need more frequent additional air but that’s not really a problem and is to be expected with gym balls.

Obviously this gym ball takes up quite a lot of space and I actually keep mine inflated most of the time and leave it in a corner of my bedroom. The only time I usually deflate this is if the kids are going to be visiting and I don’t want them to be tempted in to mucking around on it and potentially hurting themselves or damaging my gym ball.

In general I would definitely recommend this. I use mine quite frequently, on the days when I can’t be bothered to go to the gym, and I would definitely say that this is helping to increase my balance, my strength and help me tone up and look far better than I ever have before. I would say that this is ideal for people around 5 foot to 5 foot 6 inches as any more than that and the ball is just going to be a little too small for you. The price of this is fantastic and it holds my weight with ease. A 5/5 from me!