Today I am sharing some exercises that will help goalies (and skaters for that matter) get a stronger shot, but first off, thanks to those of you who “followed” @Coachtdoig the other day – today Tyler let me park in my parking spot again, so I think we are over it :).  For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, I explained how yesterday Tyler got sour that I had more Twitter followers than he did so he decided to show me who really runs the show at Revolution – you can read the whole story here.

Exercises to help hockey goalies get a stronger shot…

More often than not a goalie gets noticed not for being a great puck handler with a good ability to pass the puck up the ice to start a rush, but you sure notice one that is NOT good at it.  We can all picture the goalie who tries to fire the puck up the ice only to have it fizzle onto the stick of a rushing opponent who snipes the puck to the back of the twine before the goalie can scramble back into the blue paint.

This is an area we are focusing on for one of my Elite Goalie Strength and Conditioning members and I had an email request for some exercises to help with a good strong shot from another one of you, so I promised that I would make it a blog post this week – so gotta get it done!

The good news is that it does not take much – the power behind your shot depends largely on the strength and power in your legs and hips.  Then you need the core stability to transfer that force and finally strong upper extremities that can handle all that force and pass it along to your stick with a good precise finish.

So how do we develop strong and powerful legs and hips?  How do we gain good core stability?  How do you develop upper body strength?  Through a good functional training program for hockey of course.  If you spent all summer on the leg press and bench press, then you should probably start by developing some stable functional strength.

In the case of the athletes asking the question right now, I know they are following a good functional training program so I will cut the basics and give you a few of the end stage exercises that can really help you fine-tune all that strength and power directly into your shot.

Here is where I remind you that I am your strength and conditioning coach, not your technical coach, so just like you technique coach might tell you to do crunches for core training, we know better.  I want you to ignore my hand positions on the drill with the stick – I know you have different grips that you use on the stick (at least the guys I train at the gym do), so practice that stick drill with the different hand positions you personally use.

Watch the video below to see what I mean…

I don’t want you doing all of these on one day, I would split them up and incorporate one into your workout three days per week.  Remember you are not shooting or playing the puck all the time, so this is not meant to be an endurance drill it is meant to help build your power, so 3-4 sets of 4-6 reps each is all you need.

Make sure you are using your legs and hips to generate the power and your torso to transfer the force to your upper body.  You should not be twisting at your lower back – this is stressful on your lower back and takes power out of your shot.

Finally, you should actually shoot some pucks, so set up a tarp in the driveway or head out to the local tennis court (when no one is there playing tennis of course) and shoot 40 pucks per day – you will be amazed how much that helps.  To make it even more specific wear your roller blades while you shoot so you have to do more dynamic stabilization.  It is MUCH easier to shoot standing on the floor in shoes.

I hope this helps – thanks for the great question.

Cheers,
M