maratoolBackward Medicine Ball Throw
How to do the backward medicine ball throw
- This exercise is best done with a partner. If you lack a partner, the ball can be thrown and retrieved or thrown against a wall.
- Begin standing a few meters in front of your partner, both facing the same direction. Begin holding the ball between your legs.
- Squat down and then forcefully reverse direction, coming to full extension and you toss the ball over your head to your partner.
- Your partner can then roll the ball back to you. Repeat for the desired number of repetitions.
Muscles worked
The force comes from the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.
A plyometric repetition is over before a slow contraction could contribute anything, so they have to produce that force immediately on contact.
Every exercise for:Shoulders
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
It is filed under plyometrics, which trains the stretch-shortening cycle: loaded fast, released immediately. Contact time matters more than volume, so these belong early in a session.
What you need
A medicine ball can be thrown and caught, which suits movements where you keep accelerating the load all the way through instead of decelerating it to spare a joint.
Every exercise using:Medicine ball
These train the shoulders too, using equipment this one does not:
- Ball Wall Circlesexercise ball
- Band Pull Apartband
- Barbell Incline Shoulder Raisebarbell
- Bent Over Dumbbell Rear Delt Raise With Head On Benchdumbbell
- Bent Over Low-Pulley Side Lateralcable
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 74 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.