Spartan Training Club Kiama is “kind of” on a break for the next week and a half as Oxygen Health & Fitness enters a period of programming based around the Commonwealth Games. There’s a shift to some sports activities and we’ve already participated in Table Tennis and Rugby 7’s whilst tonight we turn to some serious games of Squash to get the heart rates up.
In between the fun and games though we had a Weightlifting Competition specifically the Clean & Jerk. Putting some practice into our Power Cleans certainly paid off and it was great to see a heap of guys of all shapes and sizes pushing themselves for Gold Medal Glory.
Today’s exercise looks at an unusual athletic movement involving power, mobility and coordination that is already paying off for some of our Spartans.
Read on for this week’s news…
Oxygen Health & Fitness
Rotational Med Ball Throw
The rotational demands of most elite sports incorporate many different movements and muscle recruitment patterns that you can’t train in the weightroom. This is where we implement medicine ball training to bridge the gap between strength and power gained in the gym and sport-specific movement.
A solid foundation of strength is recommended before implementing medicine ball training into your program and, without proper technique, you’ll be reinforcing poor movement patterns that could potentially contribute to an injury down the road.
Keys to Developing Rotational Power
– Rotational movement should come from the upper back (thoracic spine) and hips, NOT the lower back.
– NEVER sacrifice proper form for speed of the movement.
– NEVER sacrifice speed of the movement for weight (most athletes can use around 2-5kg depending on the exercise.)
– Train power equally on your dominant and non-dominant side.
Medicine ball throws alone will not elicit the desired results without a consistent strength training program to match.
Here’s how to do the Medicine Ball Side Throw:
Position yourself 90 degrees to a strong wall. You should be about 1 to 1.5m from the wall with a medicine ball in front of your torso.
Initiate the throw by swinging the ball to the start position (loading the side away from the wall) and shifting your weight to this side of your body.
Start to think about shifting your movement back in the opposite direction a little before the ball is completely decelerated. This will eventually get that side ahead of the ball, teaching a whipping or elastic delivery.
When all of this starts to happen, you’ll note that the effort is easy. Progression for this exercise is for a faster loading and switching. Each throw should go through a back foot to front foot weight shift every time the pass is delivered.
No harbour bridge passes
Throw each pass hard and flat along a horizontal line to the wall. No loopy, harbour bridge looking passes. We want to develop power from this exercise and that means throwing the ball hard. Trust the rebound and once you’ve practised it a few times you’ll develop a good rhythm.
Weightlifting proves popular
It was great to see a solid turnout for the Weightlifting Event last night with 8 Guys and 9 Girls taking on the Clean & Jerk. We had a range of shapes and sizes and nobody really had loads of experience but we got in and had a crack anyway. The Gold Medal in the guys went to Sean Casey with 90kg (below) with Ant Mattata close by at 85kg and yours truly at 80kg. There’s 3 more Weightlifting Events throughout our Oxywealth Games Timetable and there’s going to be some Powerlifting thrown in with the Olympic lifts just to keep everyone honest.
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