MgH2 was processed by short time high-energy ball milling (BM) and cold rolling (CR). A new alternative processing route (CR + BM) using the combination of CR followed by short time BM step was also applied. The effects on the final morphology, crystalline structure and H-sorption properties were evaluated. The CR + BM processing (compared to BM and CR process) resulted in an inhomogeneous particle size distribution and the biggest crystallite size of MgH2, showing that there is a clear dependence between the size/shape of the particles which compose the starting material and the efficiency of crystallite size reduction during the BM process. On the other hand, we observed that a short BM step improved the kinetic properties of the cold rolled material. It shows that the particle size reduction of MgH2 obtained by CR combined with the increase in specific surface area attained by short BM step could be key factors to allow the use of the CR + BM route.