Big things come in small packages.
Goalies often sell themselves short, believing that if they do not have an hour or more everyday to train, that it is not really worth the bother doing less. Nothing could be farther from the truth based on my experience. Let’s say an NHL goalie does off-ice training for 2 hours per day, five days per week in the off-season. Assuming they are doing the right type of training, let’s say that gives them 100% improvement.
Using the same logic, does it make sense that if you trained 2-4 times per week for a maximum of 40-minutes per session (some workouts will only be 15-20 minutes long) that you could improve your on-ice performance by 15-20%? Would any of you like to be 15-20% better?
Success or Failure – chose one.
Let’s go back to Kindergarten right now and put on our imagination. Imagine your goaltending career, and I don’t care in any way if that career is AA, NHL or OBBL (old boys beer league), just picture your career. Now imagine that you come to a fork in the road and the sign showing two options – either success or failure. Which will you chose?
Do you believe that you are as good a goalie as you can be? More importantly are you as good a goalie as you want to be? I doubt it – I don’t think you would be reading this blog if you were answering “Yes” to both of these questions.
3 Stability Ball Core Exercises for Hockey Goalies
If you take away all of a goalies muscle and connective tissue, what you have is a skeleton with some guts wearing goalie pads. Can that bag of bones stop a puck? No way, there would be no way to move in the crease or do a spectacular glove save. So let’s add the muscles back to your arms and legs so you can move. Would that be any better?
Nope, not at all – the muscles acting alone on the arms and legs would pretty much pull the skeleton to pieces. So the next layer we need is the core. Now we can move as a functional unit. Check out the video below to learn more about three of my favourite off-ice core training exercises for goalies.
Top goalie coach Steve McKichan talks pitfalls that stop your progress.
I was lucky enough to catch up with top goaltending coach Steve McKichan of Future Pro Goalie Schools last Friday to learn about the common pitfalls that hinder a goalie’s development. He tells us the top three mistakes and I bet you all make at least one of them. But don’t worry, Steve was also kind enough to tell us how to correct them and what to do to become an even better goalie.
Off-Ice Goalie Drills Using the Slideboard
Thanks so much for all of your great comments after the last post – as promised, I found a couple of minutes yesterday to shoot a video showing a slideboard circuit for goalies. Quite a few of you have slideboards, but use them for striding or don’t use them very much. I put this circuit together for you to use – give it a try- it is tough!
Tales from Sin City and Slideboard Training
Well, we made it back from Sin City without incident! There was a run in with a Tarantula on a great run/scramble/hike we did up Turtlehead Peak – that is the actual critter shown in the photo below.
Part 2: Death of Cardio for Goalies + BONUS offer
By the time you are reading this post, Paul & I will be on our way to, or in, Las Vegas for a few days of holiday followed by a few days of business meetings. We are spending the first few days doing some hiking and relaxing out in the Red Rock Canyon area and then we will come into the craziness of Vegas proper for the rest of the time. Stay tuned for stories.
Before I get to part two of the article “The Death of Cardio for Goalies” I want to tell you about the SPECIAL BONUS with the Ultimate Goalie Training system that I am offering while I am away on holiday. When I first released the Ultimate 12-minute Goalie Warm-Up, I had a special offer where you could get the Ultimate 12-Minute Goalie Warm-Up AND the Ultimate Goalie Training System for only $97 rather than $134. I called it the Ultimate Goalie Domination package! Some of you have still found that link and got a great deal on the package, but I have not been advertising that it is there…until now!
The Death of Cardio for Hockey Goalies: Part One
Thanks for coming out ‘steady state cardio…your services are no longer needed. Same goes for you ‘fat burning zone’; you’re outta here too!
I am going to give you a few little treats over the next few days. Why you ask? What have you done to deserve treats? To be honest, not much really – just kidding! The truth is that I am heading out of town and I want to make sure you are well cared for during my time away. Paul and I a heading to Vegas-baby! I have some business meetings there next Friday/Saturday so we are heading out on Sunday for a few days of vacation before the meetings. Since my summers are consumed by training hockey players six days per week, this will be our ‘summer holiday’ and I am pretty pumped!!
So in anticipation of my departure and because Kyle emailed me to remind me that he is looking for some cardio workouts for goalies, I am going to give you a sneak peak at my NEW goalie training product! My goal is to release it in the next 4-5 weeks so stay tuned. Here is the first excerpt from the new manual teaching your Cardio Mythology 101. Stay tuned for Part Two coming on Sunday or Monday outlining the type of cardio training that helps you actually stop pucks. The final bonus treat I am going to share with you will be outlined in Part Two of this series. I cannot tell you what it is, but I can tell you that for the first 20 of you who purchase the Ultimate Goalie Training System while I am away on holiday will get a special free bonus. I will tell you what it is on Sunday/Monday. For now, enjoy…
Hot online resources for hockey goalies.
End of the pre-season, on the cusp of the 2010-11 regular season which starts Thursday! Woohoo! This is a quick post today, but I want to share with you my favourite online resources for goalies. Here they are in no particular order:
Wonder if Luongo ever tries this?
I find the pre-season fascinating for a few reasons 1) I have to anxiously wait to see how the athletes I train over the summer are doing at their pro camps and 2) there are always lots of tweaks and strains that pop up and this always gets me thinking about the ‘why’. The one that sticks in my head most recently is Luongo’s groin ‘tweak’. I immediately thought back to an article about how Luongo became passionate about road biking this off-season and how he logged 1800km on the bike to help him drop 8lbs of weight. I can’t help but think…hmmmmmmm!