MedBall Training To Improve Your Obliques!
Medicine ball training is a great tool for developing total-body power, rotary power and anterior core power.
The key to medicine ball training is the ability to develop power in hip internal and external rotation and to move that power from the ground through the core.
However, it is very easy to mistakenly think that rotary power means lumbar rotation.
As previously discussed in my core training for the athlete, lumbar rotation is potentially dangerous and not all functional.
Simply put, don’t create rotary power with your lower back!
It’s About Creating Power In The Hips, Not The Lumbar Spine!
Power is all about how we produce/reduce/accept ground reaction forces.
What’s tricky with implementing medicine ball training for rotary power development is that requires learning how to apply force in all three planes (sagittal, frontal, transverse) due to the amount of sequencing involved.
It’s not like jump training in which we just learn how to move in the sagittal plane (think of going up and down)
Movements such as a baseball swing, lacrosse shot, golf swing and just about any striking or throwing skill are accomplished with hip rotation and a relatively stable lumbar spine.
It’s all in the hips!
Coordination For Optimal Rotational Power
We need the athlete to be able to coordinate how to transfer force efficiently, from the ground through the legs, through the core, and finally the arms to the ball.
This transfer process is the essence of med ball training for rotary power.
Teaching the athlete how to set up in the right posture so that we place the majority of the trunk and femur muscles attaching to the stance side of the pelvis in their optimum length-tension range (near midrange).
So that energy can be most effectively transferred from the ground through the trunk to the upper limb (in case of upper limb activities) and from the hip to the knee to the ankle (in the case of lower-limb activities).
The Prerequisites To Safely Perform Medball Exercises
Before we dive head on into cool med ball drills we need to make sure we check some things off before we proceed. Can/does the athlete:
- Control the amount of force being generated (balanced).
- Have single leg stability
- Dissociate thoracic rotation and hip rotation
Checking these boxes off will help establish a solid foundation for Medball training.
4 Prerequisite Medball Exercises
Below I have added some of my favorite prerequisite medball drills to make sure our athlete meets the prerequisites before adding in more advanced medball drills.
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