Medicine Ball Bench Press Throw

Tips

• Choose a light ball; power drops the moment the load is too heavy.
• Throw vertically so the ball comes back to your hands, ideally with a spotter guiding it.
• Keep the shoulder blades pinned to the bench through the catch to protect the shoulders.

Variations

• Medicine Ball Chest Pass
• Barbell Bench Press
• Plyo Push-Up
• Medicine Ball Overhead Throw

Common mistakes

• Anything off vertical is aimed at your own face from arm's length, so the first thing to fix is where the ball comes down. Work with someone watching, or throw into a wall or net if alone.
• A heavy slam ball gets used because it is what the gym owns, and a dead ball neither rises nor returns predictably. Use a light rubber medicine ball and save the heavy one for slams.
• The ball sits in the palms with the fingers on top, so the release is a shove off the heels of the hands rather than a throw, and the ball tumbles instead of rising.
• Shoulder blades come unstuck from the bench over the set, usually on the catch, which rolls the shoulders forward under a load arriving from above. Re-set them between reps.
• Sets run to ten or twelve because the ball is light, and every rep after the fourth or fifth is slower than the one before; this is a speed drill with a speed drill's rep count.
• The eyes leave the ball at the top of the throw, which is the moment you most need to know where it is going to land.

Frequently asked

How many medicine ball bench press throws should you do when you are new to the exercise?

Four sets of 3 to 5 throws with two minutes of rest, done early in a session while you are fresh, once or twice a week. Measure progress by height rather than reps: use the same reference point on the wall or ceiling and keep the ball weight fixed for several weeks. Before using it you should be comfortable with a barbell or dumbbell bench press and have a partner or a safe landing zone for the ball. Add a throw per set before you add weight to the ball.

What can I do instead of a medicine ball bench press throw with no ball or bench?

A banded bench press, or a dumbbell press driven fast with a pause on the chest, trains fast pressing without anything leaving your hands. On the floor, a plyo or clap push-up covers the same explosive pattern with bodyweight. With a ball but no bench, a chest pass into a wall from standing keeps the throw and loses the lying position. With a bench but no ball, pressing an empty barbell for speed with a five-second reset between reps is a workable stand-in.

What is the medicine ball bench press throw good for, and who should skip it?

It trains the fast half of the bench press, letting you accelerate all the way through instead of decelerating to keep hold of a bar, which is why powerlifters and throwing athletes use it alongside heavy pressing. On its own it builds almost no muscle. Skip it if you train alone somewhere a dropped ball could hit you or someone else, and skip it with a shoulder that dislikes the bottom of a bench press, since the catch arrives there under momentum.

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