The Strengthening and Conditioning Benefits of Slam Balls 

If you want to build a solid, toned body, you need to incorporate cardio and weight training exercises into your routine. Adding slam ball exercises to your routine can improve your strengthening and conditioning efforts because they get your heart rate up and provide extra weight to make your muscles work harder. Whenever you’re trying to increase your strength and build muscle, it’s key to practice control. Swinging and overextending is never your friend and could lead to injury. Building strength also requires powerful explosive movements. Few exercises are designed for expressing full-body power like slam ball exercises. 

When you want to boost your fitness regime, target various muscles, increase your heart rate and work with a simple piece of equipment then you need to invest in a slam ball or a gym membership that has them available. 

What is a Slam Ball?

If you’ve been at the gym and seen a rack of balls varying in color and size, those may have been slam balls. Slam balls are weighted, rubber-coated balls that are designed to be, well, slammed on a flat surface to help improve your power-packed movements. 

Slam balls are not to be confused with medicine balls ( or med balls). Though they look very similar in design, slam balls are made with thicker rubber cover to make them better equipped to handle the high impact of being slammed on a surface. Medicine balls can be made with thin rubber, leather, or plastic covers. These are ideal for adding weight to your regular workouts and even tossing to a workout partner, but they are not designed to be thrown on the ground. They could break or bounce and cause an injury. If you’re at your local gym and you want to perform slam ball exercises, be sure that the piece of equipment you’re grabbing is a slam ball. If you’re unsure, just ask your gym attendants and trainers. 

Benefits of Using Slam Balls

As we touched on briefly in the beginning, slam balls are great for improving your fitness from a variety of angles. Powerful, explosive movements like slamming a weighted ball to the ground are great for building strength, tone, and boosting cardio. Athletes around the world use slam balls because they’re easy to transport, simple to train with, and come in varying weights to apply to different exercise routines. There are dozens of slam ball workouts that you can do to target your shoulders, arms, chest, legs, back, and core. Depending on how you use slam balls and what muscles you’re trying to target, slam balls can provide several benefits to your health and fitness goals 

Slam Balls Help Condition Your Body

You may have heard of body conditioning, but you may not know what it implies. Body conditioning is another to describe improving your fitness level and getting your body accustomed to working out regularly so that you can eventually build on your foundation. We briefly mentioned the importance of control and power – slam balls are excellent tools in improving your muscular control and increasing your speed and impact. 

This is especially true when it comes to slamming and tossing exercises with a slam ball. The act of slamming the ball repetitively can ask your muscles and cardiovascular system to work a lot. A few short sets of slam balls will help condition your body very quickly, and you’ll have fun doing it. 

Slam Balls Strengthen Your Core

Your core is not just your abs, it’s all of the muscles in the center of your body, including your back and obliques. You often need to engage your core in up and down, side-to-side movements to help you balance and reach. Many slam ball exercises require these types of movements. For example, when you’re reaching upwards, you engage core muscles to extend and flex your torso, meanwhile small stabilizer muscles kick in to keep you straight and balanced in this position. Some slam ball exercises involve rotating your core. This encourages your side muscles as well as stabilizers to be engaged. This movement paired with the weight of the slam ball helps to strengthen these muscles even faster. 

Increases Range of Motion

Most exercises with free weights or machines have very static movements, you’re contracting the muscle and controlling the relaxation but you’re moving in a specific pattern, most often only moving in two directions: up and down, forward and back, side to side. When you work out with a slam ball, you have a greater range of motion. Your movements can be more fluid and dynamic.  Range of motion is crucial for building fitness. It supports flexibility, When performing medicine ball slams, a lifter must promote force, react to stimuli, and repeat smoothly and simultaneously, much like what is needed throughout fitness and sport.

As a result, you’ll develop more coordination and balance, which helps you become reactionary in motion. This is particularly useful for athletes — competitive or recreational — as most sports have you move through multiple planes of motion constantly.

Dynamic Warm-ups 

Before engaging in any exercise, you first need to prime your muscles for work. It’s incredibly dangerous to perform workouts on cold muscles. This can lead to cramps, tears, and other serious injuries. Slam balls are great for warming up your muscles and increasing your heart rate. 

For example, by performing slam ball slams before regular exercises, you’re establishing muscle engagement, getting more blood flow throughout your body, and connecting your central nervous system to your muscles. When you finally get to performing your bench presses or deadlifts, your muscles and brain will be ready and you’ll be able to perform better.

Improves Weight Loss Efforts

When you increase the power of your muscles, you increase your metabolism. This results in less body fat and easier weight management.

Slam Ball Exercises You Should Try

Slam Ball Squats

Step-by-step guide: 

1. Begin by grabbing a medium-weight slam ball and holding it above your head with arms extended. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart.
2. Engage your core as you slam the ball to the floor while simultaneously squatting down. When slamming and squatting, throw the ball into the ground as hard as you can. Be sure to maintain good squatting form. Keep your knees behind your toes, keep your torso up and straight, push your hips and glutes back. 
3. Engage your glutes and maintain a straight back as you scoop the ball up and return to a standing position. Keep core and arms engaged to lift the ball back overhead, returning to the starting position. 
4. This is one rep. Complete 10-12 reps for 3 sets.

Slam Ball Toss

Step-by-step guide: 

1. Standing perpendicularly to a sturdy wall, place feet about shoulder-width apart with knees bent slightly.  
2. Hold a slam ball in front of your chest, arms extended.
3. Turn your upper body away from the wall, still holding the ball in front of your chest. Powerfully rotate your core and toss the slam ball into the wall.
4. Allow the ball to bounce back into your hands, then return to the starting position. 
5. This is one rep. Complete 10reps for 3 sets facing one direction. Then complete 10 reps for 3 sets facing the other direction.

Slam Ball Russian Twists

1. Start in a seated position with legs extended out in front of you, feet on the floor, and knees bent. Grab a slam ball and hold it at your chest. Engage your core, straighten your back, then lean backward slightly
2. Engage your core as you lift your feet straight up so they are 3- 5 inches off of the floor. Twist your upper body to the right, moving your arms to the right, and letting the ball tap the floor next to your right hip.
3. Rotate your upper body to the left side, moving your arms to the left and letting the ball tap the floor next to your left hip. 
4. This completes one rep. Perform 12-15 reps for 3 sets. 

When performing these exercises, make sure your movements are powerful and explosive to get the most of your workout.

Order Slam Balls and Other Fitness Equipment From Archon Fitness

You may be able to rely on your local gym to have slam balls to work out with, but if you want to be able to take them home, work out at a park, or as you travel, you won’t be able to take the slam balls with you. When you want to take professional equipment home, get Archon Fitness equipment. All of our fitness equipment is made from high-quality materials, including our slam balls.

Archon slam balls are made from professional-grade rubber and are designed to absorb impact and regular use. You can order your slam balls individually or in a set with weights ranging from 15 pounds to 50 pounds. Our large range of weighted slam balls helps you to continue training hard and pushing your body further to the next level. Whether you want to have all the components of a commercial gym in the comfort of your own home, or you want your commercial gym business to have the best equipment – Archon Fitness is the solution for you. Check out all of our equipment by visiting our online shop. You can also contact our support team if you have any questions or special requests.