Explosive Upper Body Bag Throws

Couple of months ago I’ve made a video on explosive upper body medicine ball throws, which I’ve made for a friend of mine to showcase him couple of drills.

In my last gym workout (if that fuckarounditis could be called a workout) I wanted to do some upper body explosive work, but I lacked medicine balls (thank you Jovan Buha for not leaving your medicine ball in the gym, wanker). So I decided to play with a heavy bag.

As with the previous video, these could be used in contact sports (rugby, Aussie rules football, American football) and sports such as boxing and shot put. Since heavy bag is more, well heavier than medicine ball, these type of movements are more “force dominant” on the force-velocity continuum and hence more suited to “pushing” sports, rather than punching.

Most explosive drills could be done in (1) extensive manner and (2) intensive manner. Extensive is a sub-max rhythmical way of performing the pushes, which prepares you for the more intensive training, which is more, well, intensive – the pushes are more maximal and usually with a rhythm break (i.e. a pause).

One can also use pre-stretch or go from a dead-start. For example, a partner could swing a bag and one should catch it and throw it back. This way some pre-stretching is utilized. Again, different ways to skin a cat that could provide variety in training.

One drill I showed is “wall pushes” which is isometric training. The goal is to use the whole body. Again, this could be done single arm, double arm, parallel stance, staggered and so forth. It is usually held for 6sec and one can play with explosive or gradual force application, different angles of the body and arms and so forth. Sometimes, this can be utilized with other more dynamic movements in a contrasting/complex routine.

Other tools one can use besides medicine balls and heavy bags are KB throws, smith machine bench throws (more “isolated” or less complex movement pattern), explosive push-up variations and so forth.

And sorry for this hangover look – I had a rough night. Hey – but at least I showed up in the gym. Work hard – play hard.