Medicine Ball Exercises – Compound exercises to accelerate your lean muscle strength

Article by David Johnston

The medicine ball often looks like a soccer ball, and comes in a few different weights. Athletes such as boxers use it often as a plyometric exercise, such as catching a ball that is thrown to them, doing a sit-up and throwing it back. This is great for core strength, and full body workouts, as a small number of medicine ball exercises can cover a large number of muscle groups. The medicine ball exercises in this article will give you some ideas for the sorts of compound exercises that are available with a ball, and allow you to build a comprehensive workout that really gets you the results you want.

Since a medicine ball is round, it is harder to keep hold of, and therefore will ensure that more muscles are used both to hold the ball, to grip the ball, to keep your body stable, and to do the addition exercises required. For example, a squat, push-up, sit-up or throw will engage a large number of muscles, and the additional demand placed on your body by using such an exercise tool will really exhaust your muscles quickly. This means that medicine ball exercises are all compound, and will burn a lot more calories, build more muscle, functional strength and overall fitness. It is very easy to use an exercise ball to do an intense workout, and get a cardiovascular workout at the same time. Something that is really important with medicine ball exercises is that whilst you hold the ball, as previously mentioned, you engage a large number of muscles, there muscles must also remain tensed to prevent you from dropping the ball, and this increases the intensity of the exercise. Here are a number of exercises that you could do:

• Medicine Ball Exercises 1 – Russian Twist – Standing with feet shoulder width apart, hold the ball out in front of you at arm’s length, arms slightly bent, and at waist height. Take the ball to the left, still in line with your waist, as far around as you can go, rotating on the balls of your feet to help your movement. Ensure that you keep your abdominal muscles tight and tucked in, and use your core muscles to help you make the movements (try to feel the contractions there). Return the ball in front of you, and perform the same exercise to your right. Repeat. You can make this exercise more difficult by standing on one leg, by lifting your back leg up once you are making the turn to either side.

• Medicine Ball Exercises 2 – Figure of Eights – In this exercise you will move the ball from eye height, to knees height in a figure of eight pattern. Hold the ball at eye level, with your arms slightly bent but extended outwards to your left. Move toward your knee level, on your right hand side, at all times keeping your arms extended but slightly bent. Next move the ball to eye level on your right hand side, then to knee level on your left hand side. Ensure that you keep your abdominal muscle tight and tucked in and try to contract them to move the ball in the figure of eight pattern.

• Medicine Ball Exercises 3 – Medicine Ball Squat – The ball must be held at arm’s length throughout the exercise. Squat down, until your thighs are parallel to the floor, then return to the start position. If the exercise is too easy, you can hold the ball close to your chest, and then as you squat, press the ball above your head, then as you return the ball you’re your chest as you finish the squat.

• Medicine Ball Exercises 4 – Medicine Ball Push Up – From the push-up position with one hand on the ball, the other on the floor, perform push ups. Swap arms, and repeat. If this is too easy, try pushing up, and swapping hands. If that is still too easy, place both hands on the ball, and perform push ups that way instead.

• Medicine Ball Exercises 5: Throwing Push-up – Hold the ball at chest level, on your knees. Throw the ball toward your training partner, or the wall, drop down, perform a push-up, and push hard so that you spring back up onto your knees and catch the ball. Repeat.

Many medicine ball exercises are also compound exercises, and there are fat too many to cover off here. We hope that this gives you a good start for using your medicine ball to great effect, and has you building lean muscle faster than ever before.

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