Heavy lifting makes handball players throw faster

Exercises like bench presses and pull-downs add a large portion of the overall workload for the muscles in the arms during strength training.

In elite male handball players, training with moderate weights for 10 weeks increases upper-body muscle size by about 2.9%, but does not lead to greater improvements in strength or throwing speed compared to training with heavier weights. This suggests that gaining muscle size by itself does not automatically improve performance in sport-specific tasks.

Among elite male handball players, lifting weights with heavy or moderate loads increases upper-body power compared to not doing extra training, but this improvement is due solely to larger muscles, not to better nerve-to-muscle communication, since power output relative to muscle size is the same across groups.

Among 20-year-old elite male handball players, performing heavy resistance training twice a week for 10 weeks leads to greater improvements in upper-body strength, power, and throwing speed compared to lighter training or no extra training.

Among elite male handball players, lifting heavier weights during training leads to faster throws compared to lifting moderate weights, suggesting that increasing maximum strength has a stronger impact on throwing speed than increasing muscle size or practicing fast movements.