A few weeks ago I bought my new favourite piece of exercise equipment – a slam ball! For those of you who haven’t heard of one, it’s a sand filled medicine ball that doesn’t bounce when you throw it to the ground. I was a little sceptical at first as I wasn’t sure how versatile it would be but it turns out that there are hundreds of exercises that you can do with it that work your legs, arms and core. You can use it for standard resistance training as a weight or can turn your workout into a high intensity training session with it too. The slam balls come in different weights and I went for the 8kg one which is definitely enough of a challenge for my personal training clients and myself to use. Here are some of my favourite slam ball exercises:

Ground slams – starting with the ball in both hands above your head, throw it down to the ground vertically. Make sure you follow the ball through with your upper body as it goes down so you really crunch into your abs and work your core. Squat to pick up the ball from the ground and repeat again.

Burpees – start in a long arm plank position with the slam ball in front of you. Jump both legs into your chest, stand up, picking up the ball with you and then do a ground slam with the ball. Come down so your hands are on the floor and jump both legs back  into a long arm plank to begin again.

Woodchop throw – kneel with your right leg in front of you with your legs bent at 90 degrees. Hold the ball over your right shoulder and then throw it down to your left without moving your torso too much. This exercise really increases stability and strength in your core.

Chest height ground slam – instead of beginning with the ball above your head, start at chest height and throw it down to the floor. To make this more challenging try doing this exercise with one hand.

You can easily create your own HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout using only the slam ball by doing 30 seconds of the exercises as hard as you can followed by 15/30 seconds rest. Also try mixing up the exercises above with some bodyweight resistance exercises like squats, lunges, press-ups, crunches and planks for a really effective and fun exercise session. My personal training clients around Surrey have really enjoyed using the slam ball and three have loved it so much that they’ve gone out and bought themselves one so that they can use it at home in between personal training sessions!