Dynamic Core Training for Rotational Power

I’ve been very fortunate to get to know Eric Cressey and spend some time at Cressey Performance learning from him and his staff.  They have 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.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/videos/Eagle-Lateral%20Lunge%20to%20MB%20Shotput%201.mov[/quicktime]

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.

In addition to training explosive rotational power, I think it’s also important to incorporate exercises that train rotational deceleration, such as the Reverse Lunge Partner MB Catch:

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/videos/Reverse%20Lunge%20Partner%20MB%20Catch%20%28Carroll%20&%20Tangradi%29.mov[/quicktime]

The idea is that you minimize the rotation of your trunk while catching the ball.  You can progress this exercise by having your partner throw the ball slightly further away from your shoulder.  You could also make the throws back to your partner more explosive, but the exercise is designed to teach core control and anti-rotation, not explosive power.  There are plenty of other exercises for that!

Keep training hard. Keep training smart.

P.S. Check out my hockey training site for more great rotational core power exercises!

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