Rotational medicine ball throw
Cricket, hockey, boxing and MMA are all rotational sports, and none of them are measured by anything you do in a straight line. This test is the cheap, honest measure of the power they actually run on.
The rotational medicine ball throw measures the trunk and hip power behind a drag flick, a strike, a throw or a punch. Three each side, best distance.
Test both sides. Rotational athletes are asymmetrical by trade, and the gap is worth knowing.
The point of the test
Rotational trunk and hip power, and the asymmetry between sides.
Why it is in the Train Smart battery: Rotational power — the drag flick, the strike, the throw.
How to run it
Side-on to a wall, 3kg ball, throw across the body. Three each side, record the best.
- What you need
- A 3kg medicine ball · A wall · 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 eight 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.
- Only testing the dominant side.
- Rotational athletes are asymmetrical by trade. The gap is worth knowing.
- Throwing with the arms.
- It is a hip and trunk action. If the arms are doing the work, the technique needs coaching before the number means anything.
How to actually move the number
Rotational power is trained with rotational work — throws, chops and hip-driven med-ball variations — and with the anti-rotation strength that lets the trunk transmit force rather than leak it. The cricket and hockey programs load a side plank under weight for exactly that reason.
Know your number. Now train for it.
Train Smart re-tests you every eight weeks on your sport’s own battery — and the results re-price your training weights and reset your conditioning paces automatically.
One month free, then A$24.99/month. Cancel any time. iPhone and iPad.