19 Medicine Ball Exercises To Build Athleticism and Power

When athletes and parent first come into the gym the goals is almost always to increase speed, power and explosives.

To get there, all of our athletes need to build a foundation of strength and stability. As an old coach once told me, "You don't want to put a new engine in a car with no brakes."

Once athletes have the strength and stability to produce AND control power then the fun begins.

The problem with building power in the weight room is that traditional exercises don't translate well to field sports.

Both from a movement and mechanical perspective.

But also from a physiological perspective.

When your sport requires, sprinting, cutting, jumping, throwing, rotating etc the options are limited with the typical barbell and dumbbell.

Also with traditional weight-room exercise the athlete spends more time decelerating than actually accelerating.

Not what we want if our goal is to optimize power production.

Enter the Medicine Ball.

With the medicine ball, or anything that can be thrown, the athletes are able to accelerate all the way through an exercise.

There's no need to slow the barbell or dumbbell down.

They learn how to produce power from the ground up and transfer that energy efficiently.

With a medicine ball you are also able to train power in planes that would be difficult with traditional weight room exercises.

So...

Grab a medicine ball, watch the video below and get to work.