Medicine ball chest throw
A bench press measures force. A med-ball throw measures force produced quickly — and those two things come apart more often than people expect. Some athletes press a lot and throw badly.
The seated medicine ball chest throw measures how fast you can press rather than how much. Back against the wall, 3kg ball, both hands from the chest, best of three.
Used instead of a bench press for sports where nothing is pressed slowly — and it needs no spotter.
The point of the test
Upper-body power: the speed end of pressing.
Why it is in the Train Smart battery: Upper-body power rather than strength — the speed end of pressing.
How to run it
Seated against a wall, 3kg ball, both hands from the chest. Three throws, record the best distance.
- What you need
- A 3kg medicine ball · A wall to sit against · A tape measure
What is a good score?
We are not going to publish a precise-looking table for this test. Reported ranges vary too much with protocol, equipment, level, age and sex for a single table to be honest, and most of the tables in circulation for it are uncited copies of each other.
The comparison that actually changes your training is against your own last score. That is not a consolation prize — it is what the monitoring literature supports, and it is what Train Smart does: re-test every four weeks under the same conditions and let the trend, not the percentile, drive the program. The papers behind that are here.
What people get wrong
Most of the variation between two tests is protocol, not fitness. These are the faults that make one score incomparable to the last.
- Leaning forward off the wall.
- The back stays against the wall. Leaning in turns it into a whole-body throw and adds distance that is not upper-body power.
- Changing ball weight between tests.
- A 3kg and a 4kg ball give completely different distances. Fix the weight.
How to actually move the number
Power responds to intent. Throws, plyometric push-ups and speed-focused pressing at moderate loads moved as fast as possible — alongside the heavy pressing that builds the force to move quickly in the first place.
The movements that build a medicine ball chest throw
Testing tells you where you are; these are what change it. Each one carries the coaching cues, the sets and reps Train Smart prescribes it at, and ranked alternatives — and in the app the weight is calculated from your own last top set.
| Movement | Why it is programmed |
|---|---|
| Incline DB Press | Upper strength for shielding the ball |
| Cable External Rotation — end-range hold | The rotator cuff loaded where it actually fails — at the end of the range, decelerating the arm after the ball has gone |
| Seated DB Shoulder Press | Overhead strength for contests, marks and intercepts |
| Weighted Dip | Heavy pressing that loads the triceps and lower chest together |
| Bench Press | Pushing strength in contests |
| Dip — bottom stretch hold | Pec and front-shoulder length under real load — the range a press never visits and a fall or a hand-off finds immediately |
| Med Ball Chest Pass | Upper-body power with no deceleration phase — you release instead of stopping |
| Pike Push-Up | Overhead pressing strength for handstands |
More: chest exercises · tricep exercises · shoulder exercises
medicine ball chest throw — questions
Why test a throw instead of a bench press?
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