So, you’ve caught the bug, and now you want to improve your axe throwing skills. It’s true that practice makes perfect to consistently hit the target, but exercise is equally important. Let’s look at what workouts are best to enhance your axe throwing performance so you can impress your friends the next time you visit American Paintball Coliseum.
What Muscle Groups Are Used?
It takes upper body and core strength to hurl an axe across the room with control to nail the target. Every time you throw an axe, you engage the following muscles and muscle groups:
- Core
- Lats
- Shoulders
- Arms
In order to get better — and more precise — you’ll need to strengthen and tone these muscles. Luckily, there are a number of exercises that can be done with little or no equipment in order to build muscle in your core, lats, shoulders, and arms.
What Exercises Make Them Stronger? 🪓
Whether you’ve got a gym membership, a set of dumbbells, or nothing at all, you can easily make significant gains. With the right technique, bodyweight exercises can be just as effective at building muscles and overall strength. Here are some exercises to try if you’d like to improve your axe throwing skills. We’ve included exercises to do at home and at the gym.
Engage Your Core 🎯
Your core muscles include your abdominal muscles, back muscles, and muscles around your pelvis. These muscles help with balance, posture, and stability. In fact, you use your core to do a number of physical activities every day, and a strong core will help you to throw the axe more accurately, and with more force. You can strengthen your core by doing exercises like planks, crunches, Russian twists, hollow body holds, and dead bugs.
Work Those Lats 🏋️
Your lats, or latissimus dorsi muscles, are large, triangular-shaped muscles that are on each side of your upper spine. Strong lats will give you extra power and stability in order to throw the axe with more precision toward the target. You can strengthen your lats by doing exercises like deadlifts, dumbbell rows, and pulldowns on the lat machine.
Strengthen Your Shoulders 🤸♂️
Your shoulder joints can rotate in a wide range of motion, and it’s important to have strong muscles that support these joints. Without strong shoulder muscles, you can be at risk of injury when throwing axes or participating in other physical activities that require shoulder movement. When you throw an axe, your shoulders are responsible for bringing the axe behind your head, and then swiftly moving your arms forward and down. In order to strengthen your shoulder muscles and maintain stability, you can try doing shoulder presses with dumbbells or a barbell, lateral raises, reverse flyes, planks with shoulder taps, and handstands.
Bulk Up Those Arms 💪
Your arms do most of the work when you throw an axe, and they’re responsible for sending it in the right direction. Strong arms will help you to have more control and power as you throw the axe toward the bullseye. When you work your arms, focus on your biceps and triceps. Some great exercises include bicep curls with dumbbells or a barbell, tricep dips on a machine or by using body weight, push ups, kettlebell swings, and planks.
Visit American Paintball Coliseum
Axe throwing can be a fun social outing, but it can also help to improve your fitness level and overall health. Practicing your throws and exercising regularly will increase your performance and axe throwing skills. Whether you’re working toward a personal goal or trying to impress your friends, we’re here to see you succeed. Visit us at American Paintball Coliseum today.
