A date with Karen?

‘Wall balls’ or ‘medicine balls’, are a key piece of gear to have in your gym arsenal and are a great item for conditioning, power and speed – an almost perfect piece of functional fitness equipment. They are a sure fire way to wreak havoc on your lungs in a workout. Just give ‘Karen’ (150 wall balls for time) a go and see how you feel after.

The awesome thing about medicine balls is they’re easy to throw in the car and take away on holiday, and are fairly inconspicuous at home or on your gym floor (or even better – in their own storage rack). They conveniently come in a range of weights to suit an individual’s needs.

Having a high quality medicine ball is key. I recently competed in a CrossFit competition and the balls were terrible quality. I’d liken them to an 8kg pillow… making them extremely hard to hold and even harder to aim at the target. When they’re not nicely balanced they also fly off the wall all over the show which makes the workout a whole lot harder (not harder in a good way, harder in a frustrating way)

Like all of our Industrial Athletic products, we’ve done a bunch of R&D to ensure the medicine balls we produce are excellent quality and a pleasure to use – not that anything in CrossFit or high intensity workouts can really be classed as ‘pleasurable’!

The most important thing to consider when using medicine balls is how you’re using them. They should never, at any point, be used as a slam ball. They’re not constructed to be thrown at the ground with great force (hint: that’s why we make slam balls…). The most common exercise in CrossFit using these puppies is of course a wall ball. Here’s a quick step by step on performing wall balls:

1. A general guide to finding your start position is to hold the ball in front of you with outstretched arms until it touches, but this may differ from person to person depending on what you find comfortable in your squat position.
2. Hold the ball at chest height with hands either side of it. Keep your shoulders back and chest high.
3. Perform a full squat with hip crease below your knees (if you don’t want to be no-repped!), then stand up explosively using the speed and power to throw the ball upwards to your target.
4. As the ball hits the target and rebounds, absorb it with your hands either side again, and repeat.

You can also use medicine balls to weight other exercises like running, lunges, sit ups, GHDs, pistols or L sits. If you’re really pro you can also perform legless rope climbs or muscle ups with it jammed between your feet.

We’ve just restocked our wall balls so if you’re in the market for one, click below to grab one before they go.