Exercises With Medicine Balls
Medicine balls come in different weights and sizes, so there’s no excuse not to use one, even if you’re a beginner. Medicine balls are the ideal workout accessory that we can use and easily find in a gym (or even make our own).
They allow us to perform a very intense and functional workout. Therefore, today we want to show you a series of exercises to work your whole body, using only a medicine ball.
The medicine ball is a perfect implement to train and help our muscles, by adding some difficulty to traditional exercises.
There are a lot of things we can do with medicine balls, especially if we workout with a partner. This makes them incredibly useful accessories to develop our ability to build strength.
The workout we designed is aimed at building strength and power for each muscle. In addition, there’s a cardiovascular component: every time you move your body through a long movement at a high speed, it demands a lot of energy.
As we always recommend, it’s advisable to workout carefully and intelligently. This workout -unless you are at an advanced level- is quite hard and exhausting, which will help you to improve your fitness level.
This means that, even though the medicine ball isn’t made out of steel or iron, you can definitely injure yourself if you don’t handle it properly.
Different uses for the medicine ball
As we’ve said before, medicine balls come in different weights and sizes. We can use them as a weight or a load, as a support point or to throw/roll them.
Thanks to their circular shape -which prevents a precise grip- and all of the ways we can use them, medicine balls help us to plan a functional workout and prepare us for the daily gestures we perform throughout our life: lifting objects, moving them from one side to another, throwing them, catching them…
Of course, if the ball is heavier than our body, we will have to make a greater effort. If we use it as a support point, we’ll experience an instability that will intensify the workout.
Exercises with a medicine ball
If our goal is to work different parts of our body and get the most out of this malleable and functional tool, we suggest you perform the following exercises:
Throwing the ball to the wall
It’s a common exercise if we practice CrossFit, since it demands a lot of strength and power, while using more calories.
With this exercise we work our glutes, quadriceps, thighs, pectorals, shoulders and triceps.
It’s not just about throwing the ball, a good execution technique is also required to work our muscles properly and safely.
Burpees
Similar to how we would do a traditional burpee, but with holding a medicine ball. When descending our body to lie down, we’ll lean on the ball instead of on the ground.
This support point is noticeably more unstable, which will require a greater effort from our core. It will also work our shoulders, arms, pectorals, legs and help us to burn more calories.
Abdominal bridge
A variant of the classic isometric bridge on medicine balls. We rest both our hands and feet on the ball and achieve an intense workout. This is because the instability increases the effort that we make on all of our muscles, in the middle area of our body.
Jumping jacks with a medicine ball
Especially effective for burning calories and building muscle power with just the help of a medium-weight ball. We can perform this exercise which mobilizes our legs and arms, while working different muscles throughout our body.
Throwing the ball to the ground
Very useful if we want to work the muscles of our lower and upper body at the same time, in addition to accentuate abdominal contraction. The exercise basically consists of throwing the ball to the ground with enough force.
Alternating push-ups with medicine balls.
This mainly works the pectorals, triceps and core. At the same time, it also burns some extra calories. You can do this by placing a hand on the medicine ball and performing a push-up, alternating arms in each repetition.
These are just some of the exercises that we can perform with medicine balls to work our whole body. They’re also perfect for mixing and matching in circuits with brief rest periods, or even with HIIT routines.
