DIY Medicine Ball

This is a quick little "how to" on how to make your very own, custom made DIY Medicine Ball.

The video above covers everything.  In this written portion I'll just quickly lay out the steps, costs and any other nugget I didn't have time for in the video.  While you'll get everything you need from this written post, I think the video is great for really taking you through all the steps and painting a picture for you. 

Here's a list of materials I used, along with their costs.

• Volley Ball        -   $8.08 (https://amzn.to/46gi0et)
• Play Sand        -   $5.00 (50lb bag)
• Tube Patch Kit   -   $4.33 (https://amzn.to/465ZEgd)
• Gorilla Tape     -   $7.99 (https://amzn.to/476wWgx)
• Duck Tape       -   $3.47(https://amzn.to/3svyQbC)

That gives us a grand total of $28.87.  

And that's really a maximum price you would pay in the event you had none of the materials already.   If you have an old ball, USE IT!  A bag of sand in the back yard or a roll of duck tape in the drawer... boom... half of your expenses just evaporated.

I actually made two with the above supplies (and an old ball I found in the bushes), so you could really cut the above costs in half when you factor that in.  PLUS, after finishing, I had lots of leftover sand and tape to use for future projects.

So, let's get to the steps!

STEP 1

Get a ball.

STEP 2

Cut a small hole in the ball.  

You don't want to make it too big... just large enough to fit a funnel in it. 

I made a small "X" shaped incision.

STEP 3

Stick your funnel in the hole and add your sand.

This step will start off great, but just a warning... filling the last 5% of that ball will take forever.  The goal is to get the ball as full as possible so it will stay round... no flat sides. So there will be a lot of jiggling, shaking, rotating and tamping that sand in the ball to get it as full as you possibly can.

STEP 4

Patch the hole.

I don't want ANY sand to leak from this puppy, so just patching the hole with tape won't do.  I found a cheap tire patch kit on Amazon that worked great.  I opted for the kid that came with rubber cement that attached the patch thinking that it would give you a better seal.

STEP 5

Tape that puppy up!

I used gorilla tape (2x thick tape) to first go over the tire patch, and then I taped up the entire ball.

Next, to give the ball a little more strength, but mainly just to make it look better, I then wrapped it again with duck tape.  This works great too if you are making different balls at different weights.  The duck tape is cheap and a fun way to color code your medicine balls.

BOOM!  DONE!

The 8 inch volley ball ended up weighing 17 pounds.  I also did a 7 inch mini basket ball and it's weight came in at just under 12 pounds.  Based on that I'm guessing a full sized basket ball would be in the 20-22 pound range.  I have my eyes on the old basket ball my kids never use, so if I do that one I'll update this paragraph with the exact weight.

I've seen people make similar medicine balls and use them as slam balls.  These guys are tough, so they'd probably do okay as slam balls... for a while, but since they are so solid, with pretty much no give, I think the abuse would eventually cause them to crack open.  Not saying that you have to be gentle with these guys... I think they'd last almost forever if you just dropped them... but slamming them probably isn't what's best for them.

(Stay tuned for my slam ball DIY video!)

I hope you all found this helpful.  If you have any questions, or comments on how to improve things, feel free to leave a comment below (just keep it nice and constructive ... we don't like jerks here!).

Happy exercising!!

Supplies I used:
Volleyball: https://amzn.to/46gi0et Tube Patch Kit: https://amzn.to/465ZEgd Gorilla Tape: https://amzn.to/476wWgx Duck Tape: https://amzn.to/3svyQbC