Last night I tried some stretching exercises with a medicine ball. I say “medicine ball” but I actually mean “death ball”. Blimey, Charlie, jings, crivens – whatever you do, don’t use a medicine ball at the top of your stairs.

A confession – I’ve been working out on the landing at the top of my stairs. There’s a large mirror on the wall and I find it helpful to use it to check my form. There’s just enough room to stretch out my arms, though sometimes I do have to bend into the spare bedroom, but it’s a decent space for watching videos on an iPad and myself in the mirror. Until last night.

Last night, I thought I would try using a medicine ball. My wife had one from when she was pregnant because pregnant woman look like like big balloons. They sit on it and say things like “Oooh, that’s nice” and “wouldn’t this be nice if I had a KitKat?” and “where’s my KitKat?” and “you can’t expect a pregnant woman to get her own KitKat, can you?”. Or was that just my experience?

Anyways, as I had a medicine ball, I thought I’d give it go and tried:

Before I realised this was advanced level balancing and I needed something easier to start with like:

Until I realised that even on a beginners level of bouncing on a big bouncy ball, I had no balance and was rolling back and forth on the landing with each roll taking me closed to the edge of the stairs.

I didn’t even know a medicine ball could roll. I thought another name for it was a “stability ball”. Stable. Not moving. A good thing when you’re on the first floor and trying to avoid plummeting faster down the stair than a rocket powered slinky.

It was getting dangerous and as the moves progressed to lying on my back and rolling the ball beneath me I could see (upside down, as I was on my back) that I was getting closer and closer to lying not just upside down but also one level down in a crumpled heap.

So, the moral of the story is this: medicine balls are tough, start with an easy video, but most of all, don’t use one at the top of your stairs as it won’t be a medicine ball you need but a medicine phone to call a medicine ambulance to take you to the medicine hospital for lots of medicine.