Improving Stomach and Core Muscles No 31 - Using a Medicine Ball

Stomach and core muscles are probably one of the most important muscles we have for supporting our martial art training:

1. They are an important part of our body-core maneuverability.

2. A main component as our core stabilizer.

3. Important for protecting our internal organs against body blows.

There are many ways to improve and train our stomach muscles, in the upcoming articles we will go over some of them.

Drill:

We hold a medicine ball above our head with our hands stretched up. We then "slam" (throw) it as strong as we can on the floor, using our upper body – Back, stomach and arms. We catch the ball as it bounces back up and do it again.

Tips:

1. The amount of sets, their duration and the length of time of each set, should be decided upon according to our abilities and endurance level both mentally and physically.

2. It is important, when raising the ball above our head not to create a curve in the back and bending it backwards. We should also use our core stabilizers to make sure we don't injure our backs.

3. When throwing the ball down we should bend our knees and make sure we distribute most of our weight on our heels.

4. When we finish the exercise it is very important to stretch our hands and legs, and not only our body core, because they have worked, and thus shortened as well.

5. It is very important to work with the upper body as a whole (not breaking the back posture) we achieve this through tensing the core muscles starting from the initial raise until completing the sit up.

Enjoy the Sweat

The Warriors Project