The One About Balls with Kara Rice

What if you could tone your body AND brain without weights or cardio, at least not in the traditional sense? What if you could just toss a ball around? A few years ago, we began adding "ball workouts" to the Fit2B library of exercise videos, but a lot of people are still learning the benefits of playing with balls as a type of fitness and the science behind this practice, so brought Kara Rice onto our show to discuss it with us. Kara is the Founder of Brain Connex Therapy, and she has a degree from th University of Illinois in Kinesiology plus a masters degree in Occupational Therapy from Midwestern University. Kara spent the beginning of her career treating adults with neurological conditions before transitioning to children. Once her son demonstrated significant developmental delay and subsequently diagnosed with autism, Kara switched gears in her career and solely focused on pediatric neurological treatment. She specializes in a root-cause treatment approach to neurological developmental delays and symptoms. We discussed many things on the show, including:

• how ball-play impacts the vestibular, visual, and proprioreceptive systems of the body
• how balls can help strengthen neural pathways and myelinate them at any age
• how doing sudoku is different than walking for the brain
• how right side movement changes the left side of the brain, and vice versa
• Visit Kara's website here

We encourage you to watch the LIVE recording of the show to see her coach Beth through a couple of exercises and see the video of brain cells that Chris shared. Our favorite thing Kara said during this show was, "Movement is what truly changes the brain."

Fit2B workouts that utilize balls include the following:

• Purple Passing
• Lime Launching
• Black Bouncing
• Tabata Ball
• Catching Connections