Medicine Ball Chest Pass

The Medicine Ball Chest Pass is an explosive, full-body exercise that utilizes the upper body and core strength and is great for developing core strength, coordination, and power. It is performed with a weighted medicine ball and requires the user to stand in an athletic stance and pass the ball from one person to another by pushing the ball with both hands and catching it in front of the chest. This exercise is great for developing power, coordination, and upper body/core strength and is an essential part

Transcript

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This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute and in this video we're
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We're going to take one of the most commonly used exercises, which is a
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medicine ball chest press, break it down, and show you guys how to get the most out of
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every centimeter of this exercise. I'm going to have my friend Vinnie come out,
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he's going to help me demonstrate. Now, the first thing we've got to teach Vinnie,
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before we even get into the power; we know that power exercise means
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that it's going to be high velocity, it's going to be ballistic, and it's going to
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require in amortization phase. But, before we can take advantage of that
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amortisation phase, this is going to sound silly, I need to teach Vinnie how to
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catch. Now, Vinnie, just go ahead and do a medicine ball chest press like we see
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everybody do. Alright. He caught the ball here. If I want an amortization
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phase, I want an eccentric load to a quick concentric turn around. I can't
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have any catching the ball here. He's stopping the ball, and then throwing it
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back. If we're going to catch this ball and take advantage of our connective
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tissue stretch reflex, I need Vinnie to pass this ball and then catch it out
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here, so that he eccentricly decelerates that ball back to his chest.
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This is something we talked about on our serratus anterior reactive activation
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video. If you guys want to look up that video, that's probably a great place to
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start a regression of the exercise we're about to show you. To get back into it
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here though, I'm going to have Vinnie - number one - throw a little higher
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than his head so that it comes back down to his hands, we don't
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want it coming down below his hands. Make sure that he stays out here, and
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catches really softly.
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That time you kept your hands out! If you stop the ball right, I don't
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want to hear the ball, I want it nice and soft, brought back to your chest. Did you
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See that? Nice. He brought the ball back, he decelerated all the way back from
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here. We always talk about how power exercises should be seen and not heard. I
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don't want to hear the ball here, obviously we're gonna hear the ball when
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it hits the wall, but I don't want to hear the ball when it hits his hands.
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Alright, so he got one in a row, let's see if we can get two in a row out of them.
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Alright, so now we can start working on, for these two, turning it
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around faster. I want you to do it as fast as you can, keeping your hands out.
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There we go. You can see he's starting to get that idea that he catches out
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here, not back here. This is going to, in the long run, help us produce a lot more
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force, by taking advantage of that amortisation phase. Let's have you step a
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little closer. There are two ways to progress this exercise, and you're going to have to use your own personal preference
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And your own professional opinion and
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see which you like better. If I move him closer, that ball is going to come back at him
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faster, which is going to create a lot more force that he has to turn around. If
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he backs up, he's going to have to produce more force to get it to the wall.
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I find, generally, that I like to move people closer to the wall, because I think that
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reactivity is more important. But, if you've got a really advanced athlete, and you
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want to work on that all out max power, you may got a boxer you just want to
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work on that all out max strength for that last final punch, - great - back them up!
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But, if you want more speed, more reactivity, you're gonna have to bring
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them closer. Alright, let's see it again. We got you on two, let's
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keep it two.
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Good, try a little lower. This ball's coming back faster, it's not going to
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delay so much. Good. Let's try three this time. Nice! Alright, so we can see
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we're starting to get that pattern together, he's starting to be able to do
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one in a row, two in a row, three in a row, with good form. His kinetic chain
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checkpoints are in line, that always stays the same no matter what exercise
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we do, feet, knees, and hips are all in good alignment. Let's see if we
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can get them up to 10. I will try to count Vinnie through ten right now and see what
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happens. Nice! Now, I know some people are
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thinking, 'all right Vinnie can do ten, they look fast, they look quick, let's up the
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weight'. I'm not going to up the weight. I'm going get nasty on Vinnie! I'm going to pull a
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stopwatch on Vinny now. If I want him to increase power, which to me is velocity,
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and speed, I'm going to time him for ten, and then start recording how fast he can
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get ten done at a marked distance. I can then move them up, reset the time, make
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him do that faster, or I could back them up as we talked about. It's going to take
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more force production if he backs up, especially if I try to keep them under
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the same time. These are all ways of increasing speed, and working with that speed
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variable so that we keep increasing power. Now, obviously if we hit a
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plateau in speed, then you can start talking about heavier medicine balls. So,
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are you guys ready to time Vinnie? We'll do one more quick review. We're going
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to do hands out for your catches, which you've been doing great on. You're
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also going to turn around as fast as you possibly can because you're being timed.
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Notice the kinetic chain checkpoints are all lined up. Those generally stay in
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this exercise, you keep nice and drawn in here. Are you ready Vinnie? Get set.
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Go! Seven, eight, nine, ten... Six point seven eight seconds! That would
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be the new target for him to beat! I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you
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enjoyed how we progress this exercise, and how we broke it down. I hope
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you get a lot more power out of your chest!