Kevin Neeld — Hockey Training, Sports Performance, & Sports Science

A Great Core Exercise

Over the Summer I was fortunate to spend some time at Cressey Performance. They had a lot of their baseball guys doing dynamic variations of medicine ball exercises I had seen previously. By dynamic I mean adding some movement (such as a skip or reverse lunge) ahead of the throw. I was thinking of how to incorporate a lateral movement pattern into an explosive throw and came up with this one.
The idea is that you decelerate a lateral movement (as you would in any stopping or cutting movement), and then transition into an explosive hip movement, transferring the force through your core and into your upper body.

I’m becoming more attached to incorporating exercises like this before a training session as they’re effective at stimulating the nervous system and reinforcing proper movement and force transfer.
This if the first time Christen has ever performed this exercise, so you can see she’s a little inconsistent from rep to rep, but she does a pretty good job. In the future I’d coach her to transition from the “drop” to an explosive leg drive a bit quicker. Give it a shot yourself. Let me know what you think.

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Kevin Neeld

Kevin Neeld Knows Hockey

Kevin has rapidly established himself as a leader in the field of physical preparation and sports science for ice hockey. He is currently the Head Performance Coach for the Boston Bruins, where he oversees all aspects of designing and implementing the team’s performance training program, as well as monitoring the players’ performance, workload and recovery. Prior to Boston, Kevin spent 2 years as an Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for the San Jose Sharks after serving as the Director of Performance at Endeavor Sports Performance in Pitman, NJ. He also spent 5 years as a Strength and Conditioning Coach with USA Hockey’s Women’s Olympic Hockey Team, and has been an invited speaker at conferences hosted by the NHL, NSCA, and USA Hockey.