Last year Michael Boyle released his infamous “The Death of Squats;“ it caused a bit of controversy to say the least.  A couple weeks after that my friend Jonathan asked me, “Have you heard the new death of?”  I replied, “No.”  “The death of push-ups.” he said.  “What!?” I exclaimed.  “Yeah, Boyle’s going after push-ups now,” he replied seriously.  He caught me a couple of times with jokes like this, then it just became a daily thing — every day would be the death of a different exercise or a piece of equipment.  Hence, today I bring you the death of the Bosu balls.

Why do I hate the Bosu ball?  You know that “little half-ball” that all the regulars in your chain gym are always looking for?  “Excuse me, do you know where the Boosoo ball is?” Huh?  “You know the blue ball, with the flat side…it’s for your “core”…”  At this point in time I usually bite my tongue, point in the direction of one of the stupidest things in most commercial gyms, and then my client and I begin laughing and making fun of whoever just asked for it.  Thankfully I’m no longer in this setting, but I was for years and tolerated a lot of ridiculousness like that and this:

That’s right; after finding the Bosu ball stupid exercises always ensue.  The most popular exercises to do on this waste of time are usually performed with pink dumbbells. I know someone out there is shouting “Not me!  I go heavy!  I do push-ups on three of them!”  This is the other problem with this device: it attracts “look at me” types and their circus-trick exercises.  So, there you have it; you can yield pink dumbbells and wobble around and wonder why you never get stronger, lose weight, or obtain the “core” that you’re working so hard to achieve.  Or you can look like a jackass, or possibly some other dude will think you’re awesome (that’s right I don’t think chicks care about your Bosu skills) and  then proceed to waste his time doing the same absurd exercises. There really is no good way you can go with this thing.  Even worse, if you’re an athlete and spend your time training on one of these things, you could end up decreasing your performance as Cressey et al. found in their study, “The effects of 10 weeks of  lower-body unstable surface training on markers of athletic performance.”

But what about for rehab,  you may ask? There is some research to say that it’s effective in this setting, but I never see anyone come into a gym take off a shoe, and stand on a Bosu ball to rehab an ankle injury.  And why the Bosu? I hope PTs quit wasting their money on these things, as there are other less ridiculous-looking and cheaper devices for this type of training.  I also feel that this is something we need to kill the use of, even if there are two good things you could do with it. Is it really worth the purchase?  There is an infinite number of stupid things you can do with it and as an industry (both performance and rehab), we need to get this thing out of the picture — the people have been lied to for too long.  Death to the Bosu ball.