Description

SMASH D-BALL

Very strong, with excellent grip, non-bouncing design. These medicine balls, also called no-bounce balls, were born for core training and smash/slam exercises; for the training of power and its main ingredients: strength and speed. The enormous versatility of the medicine balls, and the wide range of weights available, have widened the scope of applying this tool. Medicine balls proved to be perfect for functional training, throwing, swinging, and rotating exercises. This type of tool enhances the development of core strength. See, alternatively, cod. 0500 Giant Med Ball and cod. 0495 Medical Ball with handles.

The Smash D-Ball is one of the medicine balls that, in recent years, has had the most diffusion because in functional training is the medicine ball that best lends itself to train the explosive force (power). The explosive force is the level of force delivered by the muscle in a concise range of time. It is not easy to focus on the main factor of explosive force training. Still, the neuromuscular component is the most important. In an explosive action, in a few fractions of a second, what happens inside the body is something extraordinary on the motor plane. Think of the frequency of nerve impulses that propagate from the central nervous system to the peripheral and vice versa, determining the muscles’ coordinated contraction from which a given complex movement.
The Smash D-Ball, soft and non-rebounding medicine balls, represent a handy tool in training this aspect of strength thanks to the possibility of using even high loads, slamming them violently to the ground in a maximally explosive and coordinated way. The light bounce also allows an immediate recovery of the ball, with the possibility of performing an intense smash series. Smash exercises are useful to refine the technique by educating the body to more efficient neuro-motor circuits. A type of training can be introduced in any context of athletic preparation. Training the explosive force with the medicine ball implies multiarticularity and intense core training (scapulohumeral and pelvic cingulum first of all).
From a loads standpoint, 6 or 8 kg weights are recommended, up to 15 kg for advanced level athletes.
Wanting to make a concrete example of multi-articular exercise, let’s try and describe the POWER SLAM.
The initial phase consists of taking the medicine ball from the ground, bring it to the chest by performing a clean, with the elbows that must always be adherent to the hips. This is followed by a squat in maximum traction, taking care not to bring the elbows outside the knees, keeping the ball in line with the chest. From this position, the athlete has to let themself fall by rolling both forward and backward on the column, taking care of the squat return phase, not closing the knees, or moving the elbows away from the hips the strength of the abdomen. These movements allow the athlete to recover the antiversion of the pelvis immediately. The ascent phase from the squat is fast, powerful until performing a jump with the ball always on the chest. Once you reach the maximum phase of flight, arms at 90°, you have to bring the ball behind the nape of the neck, slamming it on the ground with force before landing. In this phase, the athlete must make the most of the abdomen’s explosive force and back. The correct direction of throwing the ball should be a little further forward than the body’s center of gravity. Finally, when the ball hits the floor, the athlete performs a new squat quickly, so fast that they take advantage of the medicine ball’s minimal rebound to catch it again.
To train power and explosive force, you must perform extremely dynamic exercises capable of achieving the highest combination of strength and speed. In this context, the use of Smash D-Ball also offers excellent prospects in terms of variations of the exercises concerning the sport of reference.