Hey gang, it’s Maria from Goalie Training Pro TV episode 24. And today, we’re talking about the Goldilocks Program, which has nothing to do with my new freaky do (you can see in the video). It’s all about your off season program.
Check out the video for the Goldilocks program over at YouTube here >> https://youtu.be/VBezHgfa1b0
So this came up when I was talking to candidates for the Turning Pro Coaching Program, and one of the questions is “what would you do if you don’t achieve this goal you set for yourself this season?” And a lot of the guys … And I say guys because it was all guys … Their response was, “Well, I’ll train harder. I’ll work harder.” And that isn’t really the goal. That’s not what we’re going for. There isn’t a prize for who works the hardest.
You need to stop thinking, “Oh, the answer is to work harder,” because the answer is to work smarter. And the key is working consistently on the right things. Now, sometimes those things are really, really hard. But sometimes it’s just looking after the little details that aren’t that hard.
You need to figure it out … And some of you genuinely are training too little; you’re not putting in enough work. You’re, “Oh, I was so busy with this and so busy with that, and I didn’t have time.” If you’re a kid, don’t ever tell a grown-up you were so busy you couldn’t do something because it makes you look silly is what it does.
So, some of you legit are just training too little, and you need to work harder and do more. You maybe think you’re doing a lot because you go to the gym or you ride the bike or whatever, you do what your friends do, but you’re not even close to hitting it.
Some of you are working too hard because you’re just thinking … We talked about it a while ago … “I’m gonna go to the gym and I’m gonna work out for five hours every day, and that’ll get me where I want to go.” No, that will actually … You will see gains in the beginning, and then you’ll start to tail off and you’ll probably actually see diminished returns on the ice, in particular.
So we’re looking for the ‘just right’ amount. So this is why it’s the Goldilocks Program. This one’s too little, this one’s too much, this one is just right.
So, what is just right? Where should you be?
Let’s look first at what you might be doing that’s putting you at a disadvantage this off season; so, you think you’re doing the right thing, you’re putting in the effort, and it’s actually probably gonna hurt you more than help you. If you’re spending four or five days on the ice every week through the whole summer … Now, I know there’s gonna be weeks, “Well, I have a camp,” or, “End of July and August I’m on the ice more,” that’s okay.
But I mean if every single week you’re on the ice four or five times a week, that’s probably a little bit too much, especially … Now if you play for a team that is like we have one practice and we play one game, okay, maybe you don’t need … the ice time is helpful. But if you play with a team that practices three times a week, has a couple games, you get lots of time on the ice during the season, you don’t need to be killing yourself on the ice all the time.
Now, some of you also aren’t on the ice at all. You’re like, “Yeah, I’ll get on the ice right in the middle of August for a couple weeks before tryouts.” That’s not the best either. So getting on the ice one to three times, and then maybe building that as the summer goes through.
If you’re strength training less than three days per week, then you’re not doing enough training. You just can’t get the adaptations that you need with only two workouts a week.
Now, if you’re in school, and you have tons of homework and maybe you have a part time job and you need to keep up with your grades, and two times is all you got right now, that’s totally cool. But as soon as school gets out, you better be in there three times or more; three times if you’re doing a full body workout.
If you’re splitting it up into upper and lower body, then it needs to be at least four times a week. If you do like one day chest, one day back, and one day arms, then you need to like shake your head hard and then start training like a hockey goalie, not like a body builder because that’s not the way to do it.
The other downside is if you’re training every single day: So I go to the gym and I work out every single day lifting weights, that’s gonna be too much. Your muscles aren’t gonna get the time to repair and recover. You can work out every day, you can train every day. I like you to have one day off, but that might be … I’ll tell you how we work it … But that might be four days in the gym, couple days stamina, couple of speed workouts, that kind of thing.
If you’re not doing at least two speed and two stamina workouts per week during your off season, that’s hurting you. And again, you can kind of shift the balance, but you should be doing at least four speed or stamina workouts.
If you’re spending more than 90 minutes in the gym … Now, if you just like hanging out at the gym and you spend a lot of time shooting the breeze with other guys and after the workout you sit around and chit-chat for 20 minutes, that’s now what I mean … What I mean are actual workout time, if it’s more than 90 minutes in the gym, it’s probably too long. You can get … I’m not saying, “Oh, my God, you’re gonna build up cortisol,” but you do start building up some stress hormones, which can be a good thing, but too much of them isn’t. It’s gonna inhibit your performance improvements.
If your speed and most of your stamina sessions last longer than 30 minutes. So, speed in particular, because speed is a lot of neuromuscular work, or like neuromuscular connections, so your brain and your nerves telling those muscles to fire, and your nervous system will fatigue. So you’re not getting the quality after 20 – 30 minutes; your quality starts to drop.
You can’t get faster by doing crappy reps. It’s like if you’ve been working on your clean, and you get to a point where you’re so fatigued that you’re missing lifts, but you just keep trying to lift the same weight and missing it and missing it because your body just can’t … It doesn’t have the pop to get it up there. And with a clean, you can lighten the load and then get some explosiveness. If you’re just working speed, not so much.
So, here’s how we run it with our elite or our aspiring elite goalies. Once you finish school … because school does come first; you gotta keep your grades up … We do two lower body workouts, two upper body workouts. So it depends on their schedule, but often it’s Monday and Thursday is lower body and we pair that with stamina. Tuesday and Friday is upper body, we pair that with speed so your legs are freshest when you’re doing the speed.
To start with, we’ll do … Then we might do another stamina on Saturday, which might be a little bit of a longer stamina, like a 45 minute stamina workout.
We do two speed sessions per week. Now, we might even shift that; as we get later in the summer, we might shift from three stamina to three speeds.
We do mobility six days a week, and the trainings all wrapped up in about one and a half to two hours a day. And typically, there’s one day of rest in there. So that includes your strength, your speed or your stamina, and your mobility is done with it, an hour and a half to two hours.
And then, you can do more stuff. You can work on stick handling, you can work on some more hand-eye stuff; that’s totally fine. But just in terms of the stuff that’s gonna have a real demand and toll on your muscles and on your nervous system, we limit it to that.
So, that’s what the Goldilocks Program looks like. If you want to see it all sort of mapped out and designed for you with what to do at each and every day, you can check out the Shutout Academy, you can try it for a week for only a buck at ShutoutAcademy.com if you want it all mapped out for you.
But, otherwise, yeah, you don’t want too little, you don’t want too much, you want just right.
This is Maria from GoalieTrainingPro.com. My mission is to help you win more games with fewer injuries, get more shutties, have big celebrations, throw your mask off as you skate to centre ice because you just won a championship.
See you.