Advanced Ballistic Training for Upper Body Power
Progressing to more dynamic training methods to coordinate explosive athletic movement
Table of Contents
Advanced Ballistic Training intro
Niche benefits of Ballistic throws for performance and power
How to add them to your program
Contrast Training
Exercise list
More Advanced Ballistic Training
Our last post covered basic upper body plyometrics and explosive training (of which there will be more in the future) and in this post we will add more to one of the elements we discussed in that previous post which you can read here. Ballistic training implies throwing something and the specific function on the body is that you encourage explosive movement, often but not always missing a large eccentric component. Most of the examples we gave the other day were medicine ball throws.
While I think there could be some challenges with using medicine ball throws to develop maximum power in specific joints, and that other methods or types of throws can be more effective at times – I do believe where medicine ball throws shine is using them to coordinate the full body in more complex expressions of power.
If using them for the upper body, it is important that you use a heavy enough ball perform enough repetitions with enough focus and intent that they become worthwhile and choose the right variations so that a strong enough stimulus is placed on the joints and muscles that we want to stress. (It’s technically the nervous system we’re mostly stressing but we want the CNS to really drive using the body parts we are targeting and not cheat the movement too much)
Typically for men a 10-25lb ball will be sufficient depending on the throw, provided you are performing throws with high intent.
Niche Benefits of Dynamic, Explosive Throws
Lower to Upper Body Coordination While Using High Force
Lower body plyometrics and upper body specific plyometrics (like kneeling or prone throws, slams, or plyo push-ups/pull ups) are excellent at developing elasticity in those areas by specifically targeting them. The reason I believe this section of plyometrics and ballistic efforts are more “advanced” and different is not because they are superior, as you should be doing both, but that they help synergize the connection between the two by creating physical challenges where your whole body from toes to fingers must coordinate together in the most powerful and athletic way possible to overcome/excel in the task. These sequences help link your strength, power, speed, and skill training together even more firmly because you have to use all of these qualities simultaneously between moving the weight of the medicine ball and your body both quickly and with force.
Where ballistic medicine ball training becomes most effective, I think, is in dynamic sequences that involve the full body coordinating the lower and upper body to work together in maximum power producing fashion. This means with more advanced throws we actually do want to produce an eccentric component to the movement. But the extra challenge often is where the body needs to coordinate itself to simultaneously decelerate in one area while accelerating the other.
This transforms the basic medicine ball throws (which often do not have an eccentric) into coordinated plyometrics.
You’re taking the physical body of muscle, bone, and tendon strength that you develop with weights and targeted plyometrics and transforming them into full body sequences to coordinate them to produce high outputs by working all together in tandem BUT not necessarily all performing the same action (some are “on” while others “turn off” - some decelerate while others explode - some stabliize while another adjusts, etc).
Throws like this force you to find effective postures for transferring and producing force to the implement through your whole body, decelerating & accelerating in multiple planes of motion at once, teach the body to stiffen the hips and trunk to transfer force while also remaining dynamically mobile.
This helps develop both agility and power because you learn how to move efficiently, effectively and patch up any power leaks in your motion as you figure out movement patterns that help you throw the ball harder. Much of this is actually from the countermeasures the hips & trunk create from being forced to match the speed and power of the back and legs when moving in multiple directions.
We want to find physical tasks that challenge the full body to transfer maximum force into the ball. This teaches the body to develop movements to produce that outcome and helps you “problem solve“ so that you can do the same on the field/court or on the mats. This *does not* mean these movements will replace skill work or proper movement technique for a sport but it allows your brain and body to “learn” how to find answers to physical problems where speed and power is the goal.
You will simply learn to re-coordinate yourself to move in such a way so you find more efficient means of overcoming general athletic tasks. This is not the same thing as cheating the movement but are rather small subtle physical cues that you will intuitively learn when moving your own body to more easily produce high outputs in these exercises.
This is SUPER valuable as you will find that despite some of you being strong - you will feel much less athletic trying throw like this. By engaging with explosive plyometric tasks and advancing them from the last few and next few posts you will feel much more psychologically and mentally comfortable and capable using your physicality in its highest gear as well as develop tendon + nervous system adaptations to “unlock” the next gear for power.
Touching the center of the Force-Velocity Curve
Medicine balls themselves are not heavy enough to produce enough stress to maximally create some physical adaptations on their own – but used in conjunction with strength training and heavier power exercises they allow you to apply extra force because you’re using a weighted implement while still reaching similar velocities that you would reach in live action.
This is applied use of the “force velocity curve”. (see example charts below)
These charts