I love my BOSU balance trainer. The workouts are tough, I get super sweaty, and it's really fun.
But the main reason I love it so much is that it seems to have fixed my foot issues. About two years ago, I was having some major pain in my heels when I woke up in the morning and when I moved from a seated position to walk anywhere (at work or at home). I went to the doctor afraid that I had a tear in my Achilles tendon. I did not, just some inflammation, and going from a relaxed position to stretching the tendon when I moved was what was causing the pain. I was prescribed more frequent stretching, especially right before bed, and I was to take an Aleve every night to help with the inflammation. This helped, but I still had minor pain when I woke up. I could at least walk and not shuffle to the bathroom, but it was still noticeable.
A few months ago, I splurged on the BOSU to add some variety to my workouts, and with the first workout, I thought I had wasted my money because my feet hurt so much during the workout: the balls of my feet, my arches, everything. But I tried another workout a few days later, and my feet hurt less during it, and eventually not at all. And then I realized that my feet didn't hurt AT ALL when I woke up in the morning. I think with the strength I have built in the muscles in my feet (that I didn't realize needed strengthening) that any stress I was putting on other muscles and tendons has been relieved.
So when the ball developed a small tear near the base that I couldn't fix, I splurged again and bought another. Now that the pain is gone, and I know the BOSU helped, there's no way I was going to go without. And we will be going to San Francisco in a couple weeks, and I can't wait to be able to actually walk around a lot without having to suck it up and deal with pain during it. So I have a few BOSU workouts scheduled for myself in the next couple of weeks to make sure of that.
