"I cannot stress enough the importance of having these routines be a staple in a goalie’s preparation to practice and play."
When warming up as a goalie, what are the key areas to focus on? When first starting, skating and movement help the body find fluidity, activation and helps create mental awareness. I like to take my goalies through a systems check list of feet, eyes/hands and control saves. This sequence I find can be applied at any level and can be self led or can build into a goalie session.
Let’s focus on eyes/hands, as especially the hands are often over looked. In my experience warm ups at any level lacks focus on quality of rep. It is so important that goalies learn how to create a mind muscle connection. Warm ups should start off the ice, whether it be for practice or a game. Creating a self led program will develop consistency, which will build into confidence, and this starts as soon as you get to the rink.
It is important to start simple, with a tennis ball and your glove. If the goalie is warming up solo, throwing the ball off the wall and tracking it all the way into your glove is a great start. A parent/coach or goalie partner will have to help throw the ball for blocker warm up. To add complexity you can change the size of the ball or the density (bounce). Tracking is a term thrown around quite frequently now when talking about goalies. Tracking by definition as a goalie is the ability to not only see/find the puck but watch it all the way into your body, but back out on a possible rebound. I cannot stress the importance of having these routines be a staple in a goalie’s preparation to practice and play. In Europe, goalies attend training sessions for themselves or with the team, therefore they prepare to compete. The mentality in North America is very different, we have to develop consistent standards for our athletes.
Video 1: This video focuses on the fundamentals of catching with exercise physiologist Maria Mountain. I felt it was important to include a training clip with someone who specializes in physical preparation and skill acquisition for goalies. Maria focuses on the “Why,” why we should use our gloves off ice to practice and the benefits of catching with a glove verses barehand. Keys: glove in front of the body, eyes follow the ball/puck into the glove, glove in front of the eyes, catching in a manner similar or mirroring our on ice mechanics. It is vital that we train how we play for the best results.
Video 2: This video features Mike Lawrence, goalie coach for HC Lugano, and Jacob Ingham of the Ontario Reign. This is a great video to hear a pro goalie coach talking about the stance and how it directly affects the goalie’s ability to be balanced, efficient and effectively use hands. I felt it was important from a holistic perspective to tie hands to our stance and to highlight how balance and symmetry are keys to success and efficiency.
Video 3: This video is a simple, but highly effective warm up drill that can be run at any level. In this video is an NCAA D 1 goalie that I worked with this year and this simple tracking/glove drill was a staple of every practice. This drill is the first drill we did and in the butterfly to focus on hands and puck placement. This drill allows the goalie to both see and feel the puck, while activating their central nervous system. Getting the eyes going is as important as getting the blood flowing and the edges dialled in to start any ice session. Taking from what we see in video 1 and getting the hands active and infant of the body. The goalies need to allow the puck to come to them, focus on the puck coming in to the glove or in and off the blocker.
Video 4: This video is a progression from video 3 above that I would use to add another layer to a tracking/hand drill. This drill is from Goalie Pro in Finland; the goalie can be in their butterfly or on their feet and off square. The reason the goalie is off square is you are forcing them to problem solve for each shot. The dynamic of this drill push the goalie to track the puck and make adjustments on the shot atypical to most eye/hand drills. The drill features two pucks directly in front of the goalie, the goalie starts by staring at the furthest puck to start, on the coaches go, they find the puck closest to them and then find the puck that the shooter is about to release. This drill really taxes the visual fields, forces the goalies to quickly adjust their focus and then find a third puck. This simulates pucks through traffic and helps the goalies to get over the puck and react to a quick shot from a “bad” rebound.
