7 Best Exercises with Medicine Ball for High-Intensity Workouts

Medicine balls are a great all-in-one training tool. They can be used for a variety of exercises and workouts, making them ideal for almost any fitness level.

Moreover, as they fit nicely in your hands, they're easy to incorporate into your daily routine.

Medicine balls are a cheap, versatile piece of exercise equipment. HIIT training has become increasingly popular, and medicine balls allow you to maximise your explosive power while using this type of training.

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Best HIIT Workouts with Medicine Ball

1) Wall Balls

Wall balls were made famous by CrossFit as a technique to enhance total body strength and power.

The exercise works all your major muscular groups, including your glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, core, shoulders, back, biceps and triceps, as well as your cardiovascular system when done regularly.

• Take a step back from the wall, perhaps a foot or two.
• With your elbows bent and the ball in touch with your chest, hold a medicine ball between your hands.
• Lower yourself into a deep squat by pressing your hips back and bending your knees.

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2) Slams

Medicine ball slams don't appear to be too difficult—you're simply throwing a medicine ball against the floor.

Slamming a weight into the ground, meanwhile, is a full-body effort that is surprisingly taxing, especially for your core.

When performing this or any other medicine ball slam, bear in mind that you should utilise a weighted medicine ball that is specifically made for slamming.

Follow these instructions to complete the exercise:

• At your navel, hold a medicine ball between your hands.
• Raise your feet to the balls of your feet and lift the medicine ball directly above your head in a fluid motion.
• Swing your arms down in front of your body as you crunch your torso forward, immediately releasing the ball and slamming it into the ground directly in front of your feet.
• To retrieve the ball from the ground, lower yourself into a squat.

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3) Shovelers

Shovelers are an exercise that better stimulates the obliques, quadriceps and lateral shoulders.

This exercise is best done against a wall or with a partner who is doing the same activity so that you can *clink* the two medicine balls together.

• To do the Shoveler exercise, hold a medicine ball in two hands and squat down until you are outside of one foot with your hands touching the ground as far away from it as possible.
• Then explode upward and try to toss the ball over your opposite shoulder.
• This exercise is performed in a similar manner to the previous exercise, but the medicine ball is pushed from the ground to over your head instead of pulled.

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4) Chest Passes

The medicine ball chest pass is an intense action that might help to stabilise the shoulders. Make sure you're using a medicine ball that can be pounded against a hard surface (no soft, sand-filled balls).

• During this workout, the medicine ball is squeezed between two hands at the chest and thrown by forcing the ball outward, similar to a basketball chest pass.
• To get the ball to return right back to you, do this exercise against a wall or with a partner, maximizing the number of passes in the circuit period and keeping your heart rate up.

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5) Crawl Out

This exercise is mostly for the purpose of building core strength.

Crawl-out exercises can also be done with bent arms to put more strain on the triceps and biceps, or by rolling out the ball and crawling with the legs at the same time to make them easier.

• The exerciser starts in a plank posture with both hands on the medicine ball in a Crawl Out.
• They then strive to roll the ball as far as they can in their plank while maintaining proper posture, and then crawl back to their original plank position using their feet.
• This should be done quickly for our HIIT circuit to keep heart rates high.

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6) Russian Twists

The abdominals, obliques and hip flexors are targeted with Russian twists.

As this exercise might be challenging, it's a good idea to tuck your feet under a sturdy surface to keep your balance and lessen the workload when you're first starting out.

• Sit with your legs bent and out in front of you, holding the medicine ball in both hands.
• Then they lean back, raising their feet off the ground and balancing on their bum.
• After that, they swivel their trunks to tap the medicine ball on the ground on either side of them, alternating sides and continuing the process.

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7) Dunks

Dunks are a great way to strengthen your quads, glutes and calves, and they're exactly what they sound like.

• You'll start this workout by facing a wall and holding the medicine ball overhead.
• Squat down and jump as high as you can, tapping the ball into the wall at the top of your jump.
• Choose a point on the wall to tap and see how long you can keep it up for the duration of the interval.

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Takeaway

No matter what your fitness goals are, medicine ball workouts can be a great way to improve your health, fitness level and overall strength.

If you don't have a medicine ball already, consider picking one up soon. This workout can be done in the comfort of your own home with minimal equipment.