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Crush Your Week: 5 High-Intensity Medicine Ball Workouts

Crush Your Week: 5 High-Intensity Medicine Ball Workouts
Presented by Spartan Training®

This week's Crush the Week workouts, courtesy of Spartan SGX Coach JP Siou, feature one of his favorite tools for high-intensity interval training – the medicine ball. Holding and controlling the ball while performing dynamic movements at high speed is a challenge guaranteed to get your heart rate going. As a bonus, these workouts will challenge your core and small, stabilizing muscles at the same time.

MORE: Functional Interval Training: HIIT Circuit Training for Core Stability

Siou strongly recommends grabbing a NON-bouncing medicine ball, like the Spartan Slam Ball, to perform your sets with maximum results.


What are the benefits of adding a medicine ball to your workout?

With so many different pieces of equipment to choose from at the gym, it can be tough to decide which are worth working with, and which you could do without. Here's why a medicine ball should always be in your arsenal:

  1. Improves cardiovascular endurance
  2. Increases power
  3. Improves functional movement and mobility
  4. Increases core strength
  5. Preserves joint and grip strength 

01

Workout: Intro

This 15-20-minute AMRAP ladder (as many rounds as possible) will task you to do the below three exercises with no rest between exercises. Using a medicine ball, start with 1 rep per side and increase your reps by 1 each side after you complete each round. Keep going until the clock hits 15 or 20 (your choice). 

  1. Cross-body clean with shoulder-to-shoulder press
  2. Side plank to knee drive
02

Workout: Lunging Lumberjacks

This 15-20-minute AMRAP ladder (as many rounds as possible) will task you to do the below three exercises with no rest between exercises. Using a medicine ball for each exercise, keep going until the clock hits 15 or 20 (your choice). 

  1. 5 med ball wood chops
  2. 10 offset alternating reverse lunges
  3. 10 hollow-body chest presses

03

Workout: Cleaning Slurpees

This 15-20-minute AMRAP ladder (as many rounds as possible) will task you to do the below exercise with no rest between rounds. Using a medicine ball, start with 1 rep per side and increase your reps by 1 each side after you complete each round. Keep going until the clock hits 15 or 20 (your choice). 

  1. Med ball clean and press into ball-slam burpees

04

Workout: Ups and Downs

This 15-20-minute AMRAP ladder (as many rounds as possible) will task you to do the below three exercises with no rest between exercises. Using a medicine ball for each exercise, keep going until the clock hits 15 or 20 (your choice). 

  1. 5 (left side) med ball cross-body clean to offset squats
  2. 10 (each foot) flutter kicks
  3. 5 (right side) med ball cross-body clean to offset squats
  4. Push-ups to failure

05

Workout: Med Ball 300

In this ladder workout, do 19 rounds. Start at 1 rep per exercise then ladder up each round until you reach 10 reps per exercise. Then, go back down to 1 rep per exercise. No rest between exercises, but rest as needed between rounds.

  1. Med ball cleans
  2. Med ball goblet squats
  3. Med ball overhead presses or push presses
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