Saturday Morning Bootcamp: “Wall Balls 20”

Good morning!

I hope you're all ready for another healthy and fit week!

One way to start your Monday with a little bit of movement is to do one of the 5-minute morning workouts that you can read more about here. This week, we'll be doing the 6th morning workout of this Morning Workout Quickie Series. It will be posted in our Facebook group on Tuesday, and you can also find all the previous weeks' workouts there.

The challenge is 8 weeks long, so you still have a few weeks if you join us today.

But if you want to workout more than that, you cat try this bootcamp workout that we did on Saturday. We did it as a team, but you can do it with a partner or also alone–I give you the options below.

Wall Balls – One Of My Favorite Exercises of All Times

For this workout, you'll need a medicine ball and a wall to throw the ball against. You guessed it, you're going to do wall balls!

Wall balls are honestly one of my very favorite exercises of all times. I instantly fell in love with them when I first tried them in CrossFit more than three years ago.

Wall Balls combine some of the most important movements, like squat and press, and work all the major muscle groups. Your legs, butt and hips work hard when doing the squat part, and your arms and shoulders when you throw the ball up against the wall. All that while getting you absolutely out of breath!

After we moved in June, I haven't been able to do wall balls as often as I'd like, because I simply don't have access to a wall that is high enough. However, you can substitute wall balls to simply squating and then tossing the ball up in the air.

How to Do Wall Balls

As said, wall balls are a really great full body exercise. They are hard, I'd even compare them with burpees. In fact, I think that wall balls may be even harder if you do 20+ in a row.

Here's how to do wall balls: 

1. Stand in front of the wall, just a few feet away from it. Don't stay too far from the wall; your goal is to throw the ball up and not that much forward.
2. Hold the ball on your chest. Do a full squat.
3. Coming up from the squat position, throw the ball up against the wall. Throw it as high as you can or as high as the wall allows you to.
4. As you catch the ball, immediately come back into squat again.
5. From the squat position, through the ball up again.

How hwavy weight should you use? If you're a beginner, I recommend you to take at 6-8 lbs ball. For more advanced athletes, leave anything lighter than 10 lbs in the store and don't be afraid to take even 14-16 lbs balls. Couple of guys in my training group did this workout with 20 lbs medicine balls.

I'm using this medicine ball for my workouts.

Team Workout: “Wall Balls 20”

Except for the medicine ball, you don't need anything else for this workout. The rest of the 8 exercises are done with just bodyweight.

Here's how the “Wall Balls 20” works:

If you do this workout as a team (and if not, you can jump right into Working Out Alone? part below), here's how to do it.

We had four people in the team. The first person of is doing 20 wall balls, and while he or she is doing that, the rest of the team will do the first bodyweight exercise on the list, which is sit ups.

Once the first person is done with 20 wall balls, it's the next team member's turn to go and do the wall balls. The rest of the team moves on to the next bodyweight exercise on the list, which is Back Extensions, and performs these until the one who is doing wall balls has finished.

Then, the third person goes to do the wall balls, and the rest of the team does Pulsing Squat + Jump combo, and so on, until all the bodyweight exercises on the list are completed.

The exercises for the rest of the team are following:

1. Sit Ups
2. Back Extensions
3. Pulsing Squats + Jump (3+1)
4. Squats
5. Speed Skaters
6. Plank Hold or Elbow Plank Hold
7. Jumping Lunges
8. Roll Ups

There's just one person at a time doing wall balls, and how long the others are doing their bodyweight exercise, depends on how long it takes from the first person to finish his or 20 wall balls.

Depending on the size of the team, each member may have to do wall balls multiple times, but they have to keep going until all the bodyweight exercises are completed.

It will take about 10 minutes, so for a 20-minute workout, do two rounds or for a 30-minute workout, three rounds.

Working Out Alone? Here's How to Do “Wall Balls 20”

Most of you are probably working out alone and not with a bunch of friends, but that doesn't mean that you can't do this workout.

To do it, start your workout with 20 wall balls, then do 30 seconds of each one of the first four bodyweight exercises: Sit Ups, Back Extensions, Pulsing Squats + Jumps and Squats. Then, do a second set of 20 wall balls and finish up with 30 seconds of each of the last four bodyweight exercises: Speed Skaters, Plank or Elbow Plank Holds, Jumping Lunges and Roll Ups.

For longer workout, repeat 2-3 times.

Want More Wall Ball Workouts?

If you're like me and love wall balls, here are a few of my favorite workouts you can try: