Hello, class. I’m your teacher for today. My name is Miss Maria. Your regular teacher is sick, so we’re just going to listen to records and play 7-up all day long! Or you can go into Goalie Training Pro TV, episode 28. This is for those of you that have not yet started your off season training because it felt like you had so much time in May and then you thought, you know what I should probably get some rest anyway and then you went to the cottage and then you dinked around and now it’s like, oh my God it’s the middle of July or whatever date it is.
If you want to see all the demonstrations, check out the video on YouTube here >> https://youtu.be/lCpXHo5KA2M
So the first thing you should do is, a little bit, panic. Yes. Literally you should panic a little bit because you kind of dinked up. Then once you’re finished panicking, you can’t beat yourself up about it and have a fit all the time, that won’t help so now you got to make a plan, you got to have a plan.
So that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to go through a plan and I think you probably have about, … let’s see, middle of July, middle of August, let’s say you have seven, eight weeks before you’re going to really be back on the ice with your team.
You don’t have to email me to be like, my teams back on the ice the third week of August. Okay. Then just adapt. We’re just a for instance.
So, here’s the big point, you can not accelerate your training, you can’t work twice as hard and get the same results, so instead of training for 16 weeks, you can’t work twice as hard or twice as much in eight weeks and get the same results. That will not happen, so put it out your mind.
In fact you will really highly increase your risk of injury and not even necessarily injury in those eight weeks but injury even into the season by trying to do that, because you’re overloading tissues and connective tissues too fast, too much and you’re creating weak links. Then that’s where over time you get a problem.
You have to start with a base phase. So weeks one and two are going to be your base, and again I know you want to just, you’re like oh my God why was I so stupid? I’m just going to go hard core.
That won’t work. So just pump the brakes, and let’s just do it properly.
And obviously even if you’re an NHL player, walked in the door right now, is like I have eight weeks, this is what we do. So I’m not trying to baby you.
So you’re going to start with, for mobility, you’re going to start working on your good dynamic warm up pattern. So you know your walking quad stretches, your walking hamstrings, your down and backs, working just on good mechanics and a little bit more dynamic stretching. You can still do some static stretching but I think you get more benefit of focusing on the dynamic warm up type patterns, because again, they are actual functional movement patterns, and your flows.
So you know the … you know like some of those flows that we do, we’re coming back and then we stabilize and we recover, you know some of those patterns that incorporate movement and stability.
So that’s where I would start. In the gym with your strength training, you’re going to do slow eccentrics. So the eccentric phase of a lift is the lowering phase. So if I’m doing a split squat with my weights this is eccentric and I would go down for about a count of four, one, two, three, four, up.
Or, we don’t do a lot of bicep curls but like if you’re doing a biceps curl, this is eccentric, one, two, three, four, slowly then up.
So it’s that lengthening the muscle under tension which is what really helps your connective tissue get strong. Your muscles will get stronger too, but we want to get that connective tissue nice and strong because if we just start smashing on the weights, our muscles get strong faster than our connective tissue. So again we’ve created a weak link in our connective tissue and we’re going to start getting tendinosis, or be a little vulnerable to strains and tears and that kind of thing, which again you don’t want to get on the ice.
So slow eccentrics, just for your big lifts. Your stabilizers, let’s just say you’re doing a rotator cuff external rotation, it’s usually pretty slow anyway but you don’t have to go, one, two, three, four, slowly but on your big lifts, your squats, your knee dominate, your hip hinges, your pushes, your pulls, they’ll be a slow eccentric.
Then of course working on just straight up core stabilization like, even side planks. This summer almost exclusively I’ve been doing side plank from the knees rather than from the toes, because our guys, like me I want them holding to about 90 seconds and when our guys get from their feet and they do it, and you ask them where they feel it, it’s their shoulder that is killing them and giving them all the trouble.
So we’ve been doing it from the knees so that our shoulder doesn’t fatigue but our torso gets a good stimulus. Then we can even go longer and we just sort of do that in the early stages. We don’t just keep adding time to that side plank.
Then we’re going to go to stamina a little bit. Just sort of build that base of stamina and also movement. So one of the exercises we use is a soccer field shuttle and what that is, is just go to a soccer field and you’ll sprint the length of the soccer field, about 85% of your max speed, so not a full out sprint, about 85%, a good hard run.
Then when you get to the end, you’ll shuffle down along the width of the soccer field. Then when you get to the other corner, you’ll turn around, you won’t back peddle, and you’ll do about an 85% sprint the length of the field again. Then which ever way, so let’s say I shuffle the right way when I shuffled across the first time, then I ran down, well now I keep facing that way so I shuffle back to my left the other direction.
When you’re doing those shuffles, you’re to think about staying low in your legs and keeping your toes pointed straight ahead as you go, and you’re going to think about opening and closing at your hips, not just kind of pushing using your hip rotators but actually pushing as you go through.
So that is what you’ll do for week one and two of your base.
So now we’re at week three and four. Again, the worst thing you can do is panic and try to start doing a whole bunch of stuff just in case.
Just TRUST the proces.
Week three and four we’re going to start looking more at strength at length.
So for our mobility that’s going to mean some FRC techniques which you’ve heard me talk about tons of times. It’s basically where, for example, if I’m here in my half kneeling adductor stretch staying tall in my torso, I’m going to hold this stretch position for 30 seconds. Then I’m going to push my leg and my foot straight down into the turf for 30 seconds. Generating as much force as I can pushing down keeping a good stable position.
Then for the next 30 seconds I’m going to almost try to lift this leg off the ground, or almost use the outsides of my hips to pull me into more of a stretch. Again, without losing my position. Then for the last 30 seconds I’m just going to relax, I’m not going to ease off and I’m just going to relax and hold that position.
So I’m generating strength at length. I’m putting my muscle in a lengthened position, and generating tension and we can do that with our hamstrings, with our hip flexors, all different positions and yeah I’ve shown you a bunch of those in the past.
Now we’ll start working in some of those FRC patterns in addition to the flows that we talked about in week one and two. For our lifts, when we’re in the gym, for these two weeks we’re going to go to iso-holds. So week one and two it was slow eccentric, this time it’s going to be iso-holds. So let’s go back to our split squats.
I’m going to come down into my split squats position, and here I’m going to hold, one, two, three, four, five and then come up. Again, there’s a bunch of different ways we use those but what I would suggest for you is, you’re going to do two reps. So one… two, and then hold for five seconds. Then you’ll do two reps, hold for five seconds. You’ll do that four times.
That again will be for your knee dominate, your hip dominate, your push, your pull.
For core stabilization we’re going to get to more ground base, functional core stabilization using things like chops and lifts. So chops and lifts you can use a bungee, you can use a cable, you can even use a free weight but probably at this stage I would rather you use a bungee or a cable.
So we can do a lift, so if I’m pulling a cable, a lift, staying nice and stable in my torso, not trying to rotate around. I can do a chop coming across, again staying stable.
I can change my foot position, so this is going to put a little more load on my adductor, this is going to put a little load on my lateral hip rotator. I can get kneeling in line and this is hard. It’s hard to even just balance like this and do my chops and lifts this way.
Then where we progress to, so not to start with but progress to, we can do those single leg standing. Again, depending on which we’re trying to work more, we can do the inside leg or the outside leg. So working that kind of core stabilization but then also integrate your hips.
Then for our speed and agility, we’re really focusing on acceleration and deceleration mechanics, and not just straight forward and back but a lot in the frontal plane.
So you know things that seem super simple like lateral hop and stick, but learning how to stay level in the shoulders, how to stick that landing, how to stay in a power position. The number one thing for your speed, agility and your stamina, especially in the frontal plane is going to be staying low in your legs and building that, just comfort in that position.
The two camps I’ve been at the last two weeks, like I would be saying “Hey get low in your legs”, so we were just doing that, like a lateral hop and stick. I’d say, you know you want to be about this low in your legs and then they would do it and they would not be that low.
I would say “Get low in your legs”, “Get low in your legs” and there would be no change.
So it’s like, then they’re not trying to not get low but they feel like they’re low because that’s where there thermostat is set. You know, like “Oh, this is really low” but there’s no power there. So, practice getting low in your legs.
So that’s what to look for, for weeks three and four.
Now we’re at weeks five and six, so again, we’re trusting the process. Weeks five and six.
We’re going to start adding in some plyos. Power isn’t our focus, kind of not strength is our focus but we want to start introducing that power so that we’ve looked at our technique, our techniques good, it’s because there is technique to jumping.
So you know if you’re jumping, and just video tape yourself from the front and the sides and see what you do. If your knees kind of pinch in when you go down or hop up, that’s a problem, you need to practice during this really short phase and clean that up.
If you, when you drop down your heels come off the ground and your knees drive forward rather than sitting your bum back, that’s a problem, you need to fix that.
If you come down and your back is rounded, you know a lot of you, you don’t bend your knees but you bend forward at the hips, that’s, you’re not developing power and you’re actually putting a lot of wear and tear on your body. Again, so making yourself less powerful and increasing your risk of injury.
So we would do things like a box hop up, on to a six or 12 inch box. The reason we do a box hop up is to take away landing impact. So there’s no sense at all jumping on a box really high.
That is a YouTube stunt. It doesn’t make you a better athlete, so just don’t bother because it’s, yeah. It doesn’t increase you leg power, it just has a little higher risk if you miss the jump but it doesn’t do anything for your leg power.
So we use a six or a 12 inch box, you know just dropping down, then up, and landing on the box with good mechanics. Then stepping off.
If that all looks really good, then you would just go to a squat jump, right on the floor, landing in the same spot, practicing those mechanics. That’s all we’re worried about in this phase.
Then we’re going to do some max strength. So again, for your big lifts. Your knee dominate, your hip dominate, your push, your pull, you would go about four rounds.
This is for like someone whose training seriously, playing at a pretty high level. This isn’t for a kid whose like 10, 11, 12, 13 years old. This is for you know people who are a little bit older going forth.
So, four reps for those, but again, like your stabilization drills, they’ll still be higher, eight to twelve repetitions of those but for your primary big lifts, about four reps.
You’ll also start to introduce your Olympic lifts if you know how to do them. We use hand clean, we don’t do any clean from the floor. We don’t do any snatch from the floor, we honestly don’t really use snatch much anymore at all because people have trouble getting that shoulder range and it’s such a high velocity thing that you kind of can get there but it can really yank on you.
So we do mostly hand clean but start adding that in, again it isn’t our focus this phase but I want you getting used to it kind of finding your working way, refining your technique so that’ll be like three sets of three reps, something like that.
Then also introduce a vertical component to your agility. So you know that would be from, you know that might just be like your alternate knee recoveries or that might be like a knee recovery lateral push to a knee down or whatever but we’re going to start introducing some of those elements as well to get that up and down, which is just exhausting and you guys don’t really work your speed and your stamina in that way very much.
So that’s week five and six, now we’re going to head in to week seven and eight and get you all geared up for the season.
For week seven and eight – again, trust the system, if you’ve done the work consistently you’ll be fine. Don’t play basketball during week seven and eight where you’re going to sprain your ankle and miss try outs anyway.
So we’re going to start with power emphasis, rate of force development is our focus in this one. So we’re going to start with our Olympic lifts, if we know how to do Olympic lifts. If we don’t know how to do Olympic lifts we aren’t going to spend, we aren’t going to waste a whole bunch of time trying to figure out how to do cleans, you can just do a squat jump.
You can do a dumb bell squat jump, but don’t go ahead, the heaviest, even like the high level high school guys, and college guys, the highest we go is 20 pounds to hold.
So you might be holding five or 10 pounds because again, the idea with power isn’t to make it as hard as hard as possible, it’s rate of force development. So how fast can I develop force.
We have a little widget that we use in here that goes on the bar and it measures the acceleration of the bar when our athletes do cleans. So what we find is sometimes they’ll be like yeah that wasn’t that hard so I’m going to put more weight on it and they might just put you know five or 10 pounds on each side. Then on their next set, they’re acceleration is slower.
They’re not creating as much power so then they actually need to use less weight on the bar.
So it’s nice because if you ask them subjectively they’re like, no, no that was too easy but if you look at objectively in what we’re trying to do is maximize power output and we can see that actually you just dropped your power output by adding more weight.
So, we would start our workout with, like a dynamic one, now that but we would start with an Olympic lift and then into a plyometric, like a body weight plyometrics are always really low volume. Probably the most we do is six reps at a time.
Your Olympic lifts would be like two reps then we would go into a plyo that might be four reps. Then lots of recovery so, you want to have about three minutes recovery before you’re back into your next set of Olympic lifts. That could be mobility, that could be juggling, or like hand eye work.
It’s not just like hanging out at the water cooler kind of thing.
Your agility training, it’s going to have a read and react element to it. So whether that’s watching the coach, you know forward back or read the numbers that I’m holding up, or you know what’s the sum of my hands? What’s the sum of that number? Some element of read and react goes into your agility.
Then with your stamina there are going to be stops, starts, iso-holds, vertical agility. So just like if you’re on a penalty kill, you know and you’re going to, say you’ve got to move, move, move and then you’ve got to hold the post, hold the post, hold the post, but then move, move, then drop into your RVH.
So we’re going to try, again not trying to make it exactly what you do on the ice, not smashing into the butterfly, not smashing into RVH but trying to get those elements of training, of holding because sometimes just yeah holding is worse than being able to move.
So we’re adding in all of those elements and they don’t go for very long. You know, a full circuit might last 60 seconds. We might make it so it’s hard for about 60 and then medium for about 60 so that they get that longer duration but again even on a penalty kill, you know, you usually, hopefully get a few little breaks in there.
So that’s your eight week plan!
The big message, you can’t go from zero to 100 even if you feel like it is working, it’s not the best way. So there’s good, better, best for everything.
Even if you feel like, no I really like it, I’m just telling you it’s not the best way.
Follow a system, build that foundation because really, we want to be performing well for tryouts and when the season starts but we want to build that foundation to put us through the whole season.
So we aren’t one of those guys who starts really great, you’ve all seen it, starts fantastic and then just starts going downhill. Then the back up guy takes over your spot or whatever.
Yeah I think that’s it, follow the system, trust in your training. If you want it all, like I mapped it all out for you here, if you want to know, well I don’t know exactly what exercises to do our the tempos or how many repetitions, or exactly how to do all the exercises, then you can check out ShutOut Academy, it’s one buck to try it for a week and that’s, it’s all mapped out. Like this is exactly what you do.
The nice thing about it is, there’s a private Facebook group where you can ask questions and I’m on there pretty much every day answering your questions.
So if you’re like hey, you know what, I just saw your Goalie Training Pro TV episode on what to do with eight weeks, I wanted to get the whole, you know I don’t want to go down the wrong path I wanted to get it all laid out for me, how should I progress? And I’ll lay it out for you, hey do a couple weeks of May, a couple weeks of June, and we’ll walk through it like that.
So that’s all I got for you today, panic a little bit, go in the box sit down for two minutes feel shame and then make a plan, work the plan.
It’s not ideal – again, good, better, best. Best would’ve been to start May 1st but good is starting today, or better is starting today, good is just winging it, just being the zen goalie and letting pucks just hit you man. Okay, see you.