Fitball Factory is a workout concept providing group-training classes that combine football drills with strength and cardio interval training. These workouts are designed to improve technical aspects of your game and get you in shape at the same time, whether your goals are football or fitness related. In the third in a series of articles founder Kameron Jaff explains how fitball benefits different muscle groups.

The core

Legs are obviously a key muscle group to focus on, you want to build strong quads, calves and hamstrings but your core is also vitally important when you’re playing football. You get a lot of strength in your shots from your core. What I like to do is functional training, so that’s exercise moves where you’re working more than one muscle group. You have the primary and secondary groups that are always being worked. We’ll do variations of a plank to make sure the core is strong.

Weighted lunges

We’re talking split lunges with bicep curls into a push press, so you’re in a lunge position then you’re doing a bicep curl, then a press if you can, so it’s pretty much a full-body exercise. To execute it, you take a big step forward with the weights held by your side and then return to the standing position and curl the dumbbells. Add a press-up in if you can.

Burpees

This is brilliant for testing your cardio, it’s full-body and explosive. Burpees are a physical exercise where you do a squat thrust and end up in a standing position. It’s great for burning fat and getting the heart rate up and getting your body active. You’ll be breaking into a sweat after a minute of these.

Kettle bells

We’ll do swings, snatches and a variety of moves like squats into a push press. A snatch is basically where the kettle bell is on the floor and you’re in a squat position and then you lift the weight above your head. It works the hamstrings, quads, back, and shoulders and you can increase the weight as you get stronger.

Football

The idea about fitball is time, you want to work out stay fit get lean, ripped whatever, but you also want to play football, so it combines the two. A lot of people don’t have time to go to the gym and play football in an evening, so we do both. I usually drink Red Bull about an hour or so before the session begins and we play a game at the end of the work out.

You can find out more about FitBall at www.fitballfactory.me and on Instagram @fitballfactory