Queen of the Airball

“Are you dying yet?” Noelle Geller shouts to a roomful of women squeezing nylon balls between their knees. “Yes, yes,” they answer. The fitness instructor’s eyes turn drill-sergeant bright. “Good. Let’s do another set.”

Geller, a nimble 30-year-old, never imagined that she or a 2-pound ball the size of a cabbage would be the centerpiece of a workout craze. A personal trainer, she wanted to find a no-impact cure for clients blaming chicken-fat bodies on bad backs and no gym time. Then she met Patricia Bates, a former fitness-instructor-turned-entrepreneur, who showed her something called the “Power AirBall”: a mushy nylon lump with rubber bands sewn to the outside and removable weights inside.

To demonstrate how she believes the combination of light weights and opposing resistance can tone up thighs and hips in one’s own office cubicle, Geller slips her ankles into the bands and scissors her legs apart. Next, showing how to firm up the chin while driving, she places the “evil little ball,” as she lovingly calls it, behind her neck and jerks her head up and down against the wall. Then she falls to the floor, throws the ball under her buttocks, and begins a series of new, improved pelvic tilts while extolling the virtues of her product as a travel pillow. Odd? Perhaps, but On the Ball classes fill up at the Meridian Sports Clubs and at her Santa Monica studio, where students combine the Power AirBall with giant plastic physical therapy balls, on which they bounce for long periods of time. “It makes you feel like a kid again,” says student Molly Nichols, “without fusing your spine or crushing your knees.”

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Noelle Geller’s Power AirBall classes, (310) 397-3938.