The lost video & 5 definitive exercises for every goalie training program

Hope you had a great weekend – Paul and I were up to Blue Mountain (a ski resort in Collingwood, ON) for the Met Con Blue Adventure Race. It rained all day on Friday, so the cross country course was a mud pit – it was crazy fun. Basically it was a 5km run (66% uphill) with 13 obstacles like – climbing an 8 foot wall, monkey bars over a water pit, jumping over a fire, a big slip and slide into a mud pit, etc. It was pretty tiring, but loads of fun.

Before I give you the 5 definitive exercises for every goalie training program, I see that when I switched servers, the post that went with the sample off-season workout video was lost, so here is the video anyway….

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Your off-season hockey training should focus on your strengths. Here’s why.

I was talking with one of the players I work with the other day about his off season hockey training and we were musing at how some smaller players spend their entire off-season trying to get bigger, while some of the bigger more fierce players spend their entire summer trying to get smaller and quicker.

Ultimately any player wants to be big enough, fast enough and agile enough. All of them need to be fit enough to compete for an entire 60-minutes plus some. But there are different types of players with different roles.

Yes, we all admire the small, quick hockey player who gets into the corners and digs at the puck, but that is not their primary job. Their job is to get that space from their opponent to either set up a scoring chance or capitalize on one.

The big guy is not out there for his finesse, he is out there to lay a lickin’ on the opponent, to dig in the corners, to stand in front of their goalie and wreak havoc in that way.

Again, the ideal is to be big, strong, fast AND have mad skills, it just does not happen all that often.

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Q&A: Cardio Training for Hockey Goalies

Hope your day is off to a great start. After my meeting with Bedros, Craig and the rest of the crew in San Diego I changed my flight to a red eye into Detroit via Atlanta. Although sleeping overnight on a plane is never fun, it got me into DTW at 9:30am rather than my original flight which would have had me arriving at 6:45pm + the 2.75 hour drive to get me home sweet home.

So, yesterday was a bit of a write off, but I did get to visit my Mom on Mother’s Day, so I know she enjoyed that.

The meetings and workshops were great – I learned a lot and left with my marching orders for the next 30 and 90-days. It helps so much to know that I will be held accountable to my coaches and my fellow group members. From workshop to workshop we have to show what we have accomplished and I sure don’t want to be the one who shows up and all I have to talk about is how much time I have spent thinking about what I am ‘gonna do’. I always want to show what I have done. That’s DONE like dinner.

So if you are still plotting in your head how awesome your off-season training is gonna be and how fit you are gonna be next season – let’s try this – do something today to move yourself forward. You get results with DONE. As I mentioned last week, we spend a lot of money to be in that group and some still show up to talk about what they want to do. Some of you are the same – maybe you have purchased the pro-style Ultimate Goalie Training 2.0 and it has done nothing but sit on your computer until today – do at least one flexibility module and get it DONE.

Okay – on to the business at hand – this is a response to a question sent in by one of you – – you may end up being sorry you asked. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about cardio training for hockey goalies (this is what I call energy system training).
Cardio Training For Hockey Goalies

I had a question from a long time subscriber Trevor last week who asked for an article on the energy systems used by hockey goalies and how exactly they work. His scenario was something like this – he spent lots of his after work hours doing home renovation work and then had late evening games with his men’s league team.

What he found was that he was getting pooped by the time the third period rolled around. One of the solutions he offered for this was to skip his warm-up as a means of conserving his energy for the game (I think he already sensed that this was probably not the best solution).

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The 3 Minute Breakfast Protein Shake for Hockey Players

Before I get to breakfast talk, I have to send out a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Insider’s List members Lauren and Jeannette, who both won their respective divisions at the USA Hockey Nationals. Lauren backstopped her team to a triple overtime victory! Awesome, awesome job you two – I wish I could have been there to see it and thanks a million for letting me know. I love hearing about your victories!

Okay – on to the topic at hand….If I had a dollar for every time I had a hockey player tell me that the reason they did not eat breakfast was because they are ‘not hungry’ in the morning, I would literally have tens of dollars (okay, maybe not as much as you were expecting). And I must admit, I struggle to see how any athlete could sacrifice the return on their hard work in the gym by not taking 3-minutes to prepare breakfast.

So today I am going to share a breakfast protein shake for hockey players – and us regular people too. In fact it is a carbohydrate and protein shake with lots of fibre, it tastes good and it takes less than 3-minutes to prepare. I have it pretty much every morning before heading to work. Yes, even the mornings when I get up at 4:30am – I still have this for breakfast.

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Why hockey players static strech BEFORE they workout at Revolution Conditioning.

Hope you had a great weekend – I was super bummed to see the Blues get knocked out of the play-offs. This led to a very cranky Sunday afternoon and evening. Really, I don’t even want to talk about it, so let’s get down to the business of explaining why hockey players static stretch before their workout at Revolution Conditioning.
Why hockey players static stretch before their workout

When I get the question “why do your hockey players (or any athletes for that matter) static stretch before they workout at Revolution Conditioning?” my first answer is…’because Mike Boyle told me to’. The second short answer is… ‘because it works’. In other words, I started doing it because Mike does it, I continue doing it because it works.

I have had the question a few times in the past week, so I thought it would be a great topic to clarify. The question comes in different versions, but here is the basic –

“I heard static stetching before you worked out was dangerous”

Okay, let’s get one thing straight…running with scissors is dangerous. Static stretching? I am not sure about that. Although I do not know of any research that concludes static stretching before training is ‘dangerous’, there is evidence that it decreases peak force production and peak power production.

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Q&A: Resistance Band Training for Hockey

The first two weeks of May are jammed for sure so I wanted to send you a quick video about resistance band training for hockey – this one is for goalies and skaters. Before I get to that, let me give you a rundown of my week.

HockeyStrong training program started in the Revolution gym with new session times which always leads to mass confusion and then we are starting new programs for the hockey players AND our on-going Varsity athletes PLUS we started the new RevConPro rewards system where athletes training at the Revolution studio can gain points for doing what they do anyway – getting more flexible, stronger and more powerful.

The great news here is that the coach I hired back in January to work with me at Revolution Conditioning – Tyler Doig – remember him from the OHL Guelph Storm? Well he is an awesome coach – I think the athletes like him better than me – so things are running smoothly!

Then I had to take my Mom to the airport on Wednesday morning. My Mom has not flown without my Dad for over 50 years, so to say she was a little anxious would be an understatement, so naturally my car died while I was driving her to the airport so we had to finish the journey by cab 🙁

Then yesterday I was presenting at the Ontario High School Coaches’ conference in St. Catharines. Today I am running a workshop with Team ShutOut Goaltending in Toronto and this Thursday I fly out to San Diego to meet with my business coaches Bedros Keuilian and Craig Ballantyne – WHEW!

Okay now for today’s Q&A. One of you asked me about where to get resistance bands that he could use to complete the Ultimate Goalie Training 2.0 program. He also was not sure what to look for or what grade of resistance to buy, so I put it all in 3-minute video for you…

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Two Brand New Goalie Training Videos…

Hope your day is off to a good start – I am a big believer in what one of my mentors Alwyn Cosgrove says “there are only good days and great days”and I will still call today a great day even though the sewer backed up into our basement this morning. Tomorrow we are out of town all day and Sunday we are running a 1/2 marathon (that we have not adequately trained for I might add) and THEN we get to come home to roto-rooter our sewer.

I know most of you think that roto-rootering the sewer is a job best left to the pros – and you would be right, but the Paul (the love of my life, darling husband) is big on being a do-it-yourselfer – so we will be spending Sunday afternoon wrestling a metal snake through the drain and about 20 meters out into the backyard. Yes, it will be exactly as fun as it sounds 🙁

But then I got this email from one of you and it reminded me of what is important – helping my 10,000 goalies win more games with fewer injuries – I changed it a little bit to protect the identity of the sender but here is what it said…

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Understanding Sports Hernia in Hockey Players

There are different types of hernia – inguinal and umbilical are tears in the abdominal wall that will often include a bulge where the contents of the abdominal cavity can squeeze out (kinda gross I know).

Then there is what is referred to as the sports hernia which is also a tear in the lower abdominal wall, but there is not usually a bulge. Here is where the sports hernia is different, it will typically start with a groin injury or groin pain and develops over time from there.

So how does an injury move from the groin (or adductors) up to the lower abdominals? The answer is that it does not actually move from one location to the other. The injury in the groin leads to a secondary result of a change in the way an athlete uses their hip joint after groin injury.
Is The Injury Healed When The Pain Is Gone?

The goal of most hockey players (and some of their therapists) after groin injury is to make the pain stop. No pain = No injury right? Wrong.

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Off-Ice Goalie Workout At Steve McKichan’s Free MiniCamp

What a weekend! Is it just me or did it feel like there was hockey on 24-hours per day for the last few days? Now, you know I did not stay up to watch the late games, but I did see lots of hockey. I was thrilled to see Team Revolution athlete Andy McDonald and his St. Louis Blues teammates move on to the second round.

I was cheering for Pittsburgh, but Philly did deserve to win that series so that is good for them. You may have heard me mention the new coach who is working with me at Revolution, Tyler Doig, those of you who follow the OHL will recognize him from his years with the Guelph Storm before moving on to play in the ECHL and AHL. Well, Tyler called the Kings to move past the Canucks in 5 before the series even started. There will be some major boasting going on in the gym today.

Finally, I watched the Washington v Boston game which I found really entertaining and I am keen to see how it ends up in game 7…BUT… The highlight of my weekend was heading out to Strathroy (we call it Strath-VEGAS around here) to run a session for Steve McKichan’s Future Pro mini-camp.

You see, Steve generously donates his time, expertise and ice to run a completely FREE mini-camp out of his home base in Strathroy for 20 goalies who are action takers. You see he posts this free offer over at www.GoalieStore.com and the first 20 goalies to jump at the offer are in!

So, in the spirit of giving I volunteered to head out and run the off-ice session – it was awesome! Some of the goalies had done a lot of off-ice training before so they ripped through the workout. Some had not done much off-ice training before and had never used an agility ladder, so it was a new experience for them altogether. But guaranteed, everyone found at least one weakness that they can now work on and improve.

Here is the workout we went through:

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7 Glute Activation Exercises For Hockey Players (video)

Hope the week is treating you well so far – thrilled to see the Blues rolling vs. the Sharks (sorry Jonny :)) I hope they keep that going. Interested to see if some refs will actually show up to the Pittsburgh – Philly game tonight and if the boys will actually play some hockey. Hope so.

This is a quick post today as I wanted to make good on my promise to show you video of the exercises I mentioned in the post about how glute activation enhances leg power in athletes. The research study looked at leg power in Aussie Rules Footballers but leg power is leg power, so adding this to your dynamic warm-up will enhance your leg power too.

The study looked at the effect of doing one set of 10 repetitions for each exercise….cue the video.

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