The Medicine Ball Diagonal Chops is a ballistic exercise for beginners to improve neural pathways for explosive shot production, body control and coordination.
The focus of the Medicine Ball Diagonal Chops is powerful core activation and explosiveness of upper extremities thereby emulating the movement mechanics during shot production.
Before you engage in ballistics you may want to take a look at Ballistic Training: How To Optimize Explosiveness for maximum results and a sample ballistic training workout for advanced athletes.
Diagonal Chops Progression
If you use additional weights…make sure you use appropriate weight so you can control the action throughout the entire range of motion. Otherwise you defeat the purpose of the exercise.
Very often, people use too much resistance and they become sloppy. Especially when it comes to maintaining dynamic stability and hitting in the same spots repetitively.
Also, don’t just progress with adding more weight. First, maximize the speed while maintaining perfect form.
Here are the progression levels:
- Beginner: look down during throwing
- Advanced: look up during throwing and change to lunge position
- Professional: standing on one leg only
Medicine Ball Diagonal Chops Description
Coach/partner stands behind the athlete and tosses medicine Ball (MB) over the athlete’s shoulder.
Athlete needs to:
- Take on athletic stance position (feet are in line with shoulders); look over the shoulder during catching phase
- Catch MB over the shoulder with both hands
- Immediately rotate the trunk to the other side
- Explosively slam the MB into the ground (bounce-pass) back to the coach/partner
- Rotate trunk back to the other side and catch MB
Related Ballistic Exercises
Training Zone
We provide you with some more workouts and training tips you may be interested in to optimize your training.
Also, make sure that you warm up properly before and stretch out after your training session.
