Train your abdominals with these medicine ball workouts

Anybody who is involved in fitness wants to build glorious abs. Situps and leg raises are the standard, but there are more workouts that can be done with the use of medicine balls. The great thing about medicine balls is that they add enough resistance to allow you to do more explosive exercises.

Here are a few ways medicine balls can be included in your abdominal workout routine.

Situps

Situps and crunches are great for developing your upper abdominals, although it can be a bit difficult to add resistance weight to the exercise. With medicine balls, you can easily hold the ball on your chest while doing the movement, adding that extra bit of resistance that will help to strengthen and develop your muscles.

Leg and knee raises

A great exercise for developing your lower abdominals, but it does become difficult to do the exercises with resistance weights. By using a medicine ball, you can easily control the resistance by holding the medicine ball between your feet. Additionally, it won’t affect your range of motion.
You can see a good example in this video here.

Oblique workout

You can easily do the equivalent of the wood chopper exercise by throwing the ball along the wall like throwing a rugby pass. This will work out your obliques and should add more definition.

Another similar exercise is side to side obliques with the medicine ball. You can watch the video below for a good demonstration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2FEF0XGkrU

Ball slams

Another fun exercise workout is ball slams. Simply raise the ball above your head and slam the medicine ball as hard as you can on the ground. This will be a high intensity workout that will really work your abs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWa7nBbLQfQ

Medicine ball planks.

The interesting thing about this workout is that it incorporates the stablizing muscles in your core. Unlike doing a normal plank, your feet will be placed on the ball and you will be forced to use your muscles to balance on top of the ball. You can watch a good video demonstration below.

Ab medicine ball rollouts.

You place the medicine ball in front of you and rest on your knees. You then rollout with your hands while balancing your body with your core. You can see a good demonstration in the video below.

You can also see up to 100 exercise variations in the video below.

There are several dynamic exercises that you can use with a medicine ball. You can purchase medicine balls from Little Bloke Fitness. Give them a try today.