Hey! They're trying to burst my bubble!

Stable? Sure I'm stable... oh, you mean the fitness ball?

I'm slow. You all probably read this already at Fit Bottomed Girls. (Or from ABC News.)

EB Brands, a company that makes fitness balls for Bally Total Fitness, Everlast, Valeo and Body Fit Fitness Balls, is "recalling" their fitness balls. Turns out these fitness balls can burst if they're not inflated properly -- but the proper instructions on how to inflate them are not included with the product, and the balls are sold as "unbreakable."

Does that make any kind of sense to you?

The Consumer Product Safety commission says that 47 people have complained about the fitness balls bursting since 2000. It's not a situation of people using fitness balls that are not suited for their weight. One woman, just over 100 pounds in weight, had the fitness ball she was sitting on burst when she was lifting weights.

And it gets better. (Or worse.) ABC says, "Though the action is termed a recall, EB Brands won't actually be taking the balls back unless they have burst." According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, "Consumers should contact EB Brands to receive a copy of the updated instructions on how to safely inflate the ball."


So, let me see if I have this straight. If I buy one of these things, the label on the box still says "unbreakable." If I find out the hard way (ouch!) that the ball isn't unbreakable, they'll send me a new one -- so I can break some other part of my body? Will they take the "unbreakable" label off the box first? They won't send me the corrected instructions unless I know to ask for them. (They have apparently just started shipping boxes containing the new instructions; i.e. if a box is already sitting out on a shelf in a store, it doesn't contain the latest instructions or carry any indication that there's a problem.) If I don't know to ask for the corrected instructions, then what I don't know might hurt me.

Okay, some people need to go back to Customer Relations school and polish their image while they're at it. This is not good PR.

Yes, this IS the Complaints Department. How can I help (myself to) you?

Stability Ball Giveaway

[By Crabby]


Yes, we have a big plastic bouncy thing to give away this week! Thanks, Sportsmith!

Plus a little pump to go with it--because, alas, the balls aren't nearly as useful when there's no air in them. I know this first hand, because when our little stability ball pump got lost during our move, all I could do was stare sadly at the deflated puddle of plastic for weeks and weeks.

(That is, until the Lobster located a little plastic adapter that would work with our bicycle pump. Clever Lobster! She accomplished this by buying:


which she has been longing for for quite some time. Fortunately it did not come pre-stocked with a happy little hetero family (what would we feed them?) but even better, it had a little pump adapter that worked perfectly in the Stability Ball! Or perhaps she got one from the neighbors when she inflated the pool. Anyway, I came home one afternoon to find the Lobster splashing happily in the backyard and my big bouncy ball back again!)

Attention Giveaway Skimmers, you can come back now! We're done with the Crab/Lobster/inflatable wading pool digressions.

Oh wait... One quick question, before we get into exciting technical details and the contest instructions and the multitude of useful things you can do with your big bouncy ball.

Why the heck are they called "Stability Balls?" Aren't they really the opposite? Isn't the whole point of them to make you feel like if you don't pay proper attention keep everything squeezed tight you might fall over and cause bodily injury and make an ass of yourself?

Just sayin'.

Anyway, this is an "anti-burst" Stability ball, which seems like a really good feature when you think about it. In fact, I bought my ball years ago, and I wonder, could I have purchased an earlier "pro-burst" model that's likely to explode if hop on after a big meal? Yikes!

So it's also important to note that these things come in sizes. There's a 55 cm Small One, for people 5'0" to 5'6"; a 65cm Medium One for those 5'7" to 5'11"; and a 75cm Big Honkin' One for you tall folks 6 feet or over.

What does one do with a stability ball?

Well, I'm actually lazy and unimaginative, so I use mine mostly for stretching. I heard somewhere that flopping over the top of one, face up, and dangling your head back so that you're in an upside down U will not only stretch your back, but decompress your spine and keep your back from gettting all squooshed and scrunched when you're older and might even keep you from shrinking. Is this true? I have no idea, quite possibly not! But I have no motivation to go out and find out otherwise, since it motivates me to stretch out my back.

But, you can do ALL KINDS of exercises with these things, even a complete workout!

Here is a Cute Perky Female Sparkperson video; alternatively, there's also one with a Handsome Guy So Secure in his Masculinity He Uses A Bright Pink Yoga Mat.

For people at work who do not want to broadcast panting exercise video sounds to their neighboring cubes, we have some written instructions here.

But by far the BEST GUIDE EVER to proper use of a stability ball is this instructional post, brought to you by the fabulous Bossy of I Am Bossy.



Contest Instructions:
So wanna win one? Just leave a comment on this post before midnight, EST, Tuesday August 19th and check back the next day (Wednesday 8/19) to find out if you've won. (Or else someone else might get your stability ball!) And feel free to comment about any ol' thing--stability balls, inflatable pools, how your summer is going, if you're getting S.H.I.I.T. done these days, whatever... and we'll choose a random winner.

And, crap, I forgot... afraid this is another U.S. residents only. Sorry!!!!!