MEDICINE BALL TRAINING 14

‘Old school’ equipment can be used to train for total body power and
explosiveness.
Medicine ball training is one of the oldest forms of strength and
conditioning training. Nearly 3000 years ago, wrestlers trained with sand-
filled bladders and in Ancient Greece, the physician Hippocrates had
medicine balls sewn out of animal skins and stuffed with sand for his
patients to throw back and forth, to use for injury prevention and
rehabilitation.
Medicine ball training may be a simple concept but the movements
themselves can be very demanding. Drills can be sport-specific or designed
for general fitness. The bonuses of training with medicine balls compared to
conventional free weights is that you do not need to stop the force applied
to the weight and that the core muscles are constantly involved in all
actions.
Medicine ball workouts build core trunk strength and joint stability.
Building core trunk strength is an important foundation from which to begin
building overall muscle strength. Functional arm and leg strength originates
from the strength of the core or trunk (abdominals and back).
Joint stability is also vitally important because no matter how strong the
muscles are they are only as functionally strong as the joints, which direct
the muscle movements. In other words, you are only as strong as the
weakest link in the chain, and that is your joints. All too often, strong and
otherwise well muscled athletes break down because of weak joints in the
shoulder, elbow, hips or knees.
Medicine ball training provides weight resistance through all planes of
movement (frontal, transversal and sagittal). You gain the strength and
flexibility necessary for explosive power motions – from a powerful golf
swing to a booming tennis serve.
Medicine ball exercises

Purpose
To work the abdominal muscles with focus on obliques
Starting position and instructions
• Stand with feet hip width apart
• Hold the ball level with the tummy button arms’ length away from the
body behind your right hip
• Forcefully swing the ball forward and round to the left hip
• Reverse back in the opposite direction; continue for the desired number of
repetitions
Coaching points
• Keep a slight bend at elbow
• Keep the abdominal core muscles tight, turn/rotate back foot to allow
greater range of movement
Progressions/adaptations/variations
• Reduce or increase the weight and size of the medicine ball
• Reduce the range of movement
• Reduce the force of the swing from side to side
• Seated Russian twists