Waking Up to Hunger and 300 Reps Simple Medicine Ball Workout

Hey!

I have a great medicine ball workout to share with you today, but first, I have a question:

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night to a growling stomach? 

It hardly ever happens to me, but it did last night. It was strange, because I tend to eat my dinner pretty late and it's not usually the lightest meal of my day. I usually have enough energy to do my workout fasted next morning, unless it's a longer workout that requires lot of focus and patience (like learning skills).

If I don't eat before a skill workout, my whole focus will be on thinking about food. But short HIIT workouts or runs are not a problem, I can and prefer to do them fasted.

Anyway, I got up in the middle of the night and tried to go back to sleep, but I was hungry, so I got up at 4am to get a snack… I ended up eating half a banana, a square of chocolate and one of these lemon chia seed protein muffins (recipe here). Luckily I had done some baking the night before, so I didn't have to fry myself eggs and bacon in the middle of the night.

I felt much better after that and was ready to go back to bed. I just hope that this night time hunger and eating won't become a habit 🙂

Let's Talk about the Workout

Here's a simple medicine ball workout for you that I did the other day. It's simple, but simple is not the same as easy, right! As always, it all comes down to how intense you make it yourself. If you workout hard and as fast as you can, you make the most of it. But listen to your body–sometimes rest between the reps and rounds is necessary.

I rarely train any body part isolated, meaning that I don't have specific leg days, chest days, ab days or any other days when I would train some muscle group very specifically. But some workouts are more intense on one body part than others, and this 300 Reps Simple Medicine Ball Workout was pretty hard on shoulders.

I Love Shoulder Workouts

If separated my trainings by body parts, my favorite would be shoulder day. Sometimes I grab my set of dumbbells and do a short shoulder & arm workout that consists of push presses, push ups, strict presses and front raises. Sounds very bodybuilding-style, right? Isn't that something that I say I don't usually do?

That's right, usually! But there's something great about training the shoulders, that makes me feel super powerful. However, I wouldn't have the patience to do a routine for 60+ minutes in a true bodybuilding manner. My “shoulder day” workouts are usually about 10-15 minutes long, but as always, there are rarely any breaks. For example, all the exercises mentioned are done really quickly with no or minimal breaks in between.

How To Do the Slams Right

This 300 Reps Simple Medicine Ball Workout is pretty intense for shoulders! Whenever there are slams involved in a workout, my shoulders are on fire.

Here are some tips for you if you haven't done slams before, of if you're just not sure that you're doing them right:

1. Start on your toes. That way already your starting position ensures that you're going to use your whole body to slam the ball down hard, instead of just letting it drop.
2. Engage your core, meaning, tuck your stomach in!
3. Lift the arms overhead and powerfully slam the ball down.
4. The louder the noise, the better!

If you do the slams that way, you can be sure that you're using all your muscles from toes to fingertips and everything in between.

How To Do the Wall Balls Right

Wall balls are probably my most favorite medicine ball exercise. If you want to pay special attention to you quads and shoulders, don't skip wall balls! And if you want especially brutal wall ball workout, do this one.

1. Stand close to a wall. You want to throw the ball up vertically, not horizontally. That's not, of course, possible to do 180 degrees up, but to be able to toss the ball up as much as you can, you need to be pretty close to the wall.
2. While holding the ball at your chest level, do a full squat. That's super important–a lot of people squat only about half way, even those who have no problem with doing full squats otherwise! Wall balls are basically thrusters with medicine ball, and good thrusters require full squat.
3. Come up from the squat, powerfully extend the arms and throw the ball against the wall as high as you can.
4. Catch the ball and immediately get back into squat again.

How To Do the Sit Ups with Toss

This is a regular sit up otherwise, but a little twist added to it–you're going to toss the ball up as you come up.

1. Hold the medicine ball on your chest level.
2. Lie down and do a sit up.
3. As you come up, toss the ball up in the air.

That's it! By combining these three exercises, you get a nice full body workout, with a special attention on shoulders. Even though sit ups with toss don't seem like a hard shoulder exercise, you definitely feel them after all those wall balls and slams.

300 Reps Simple Medicine Ball Workout

Okay, finally, the full workout! Here's what you'll be doing:

4 rounds of

25 Wall Balls

25 Slams

25 Sit Ups with Toss

You end up doing each exercise 100 reps, and the total of all reps is 300. I added in a 100 meters run after each round (every time after sit ups), which made a nice addition to this conditioning workout.

Here's the workout video:

I did this workout yesterday, and today after practicing some pull ups, my shoulders were pretty toast. You know you had a good shoulder workout if you can feel the fatigue even whe you're running!

Conclusion

I'd really love to hear about it if you tried this workout! Let me know how you liked it.

Also, do you have thoughts on waking up to hunger? Does it ever happen to you?

Have a great weekend and spend some time outside–working out, walking, running, swimming, riding your bike. Whatever it is that gets you outside, go do it!