So what you’re doing is not a warm up and if you’re not doing your warm up at all because you don’t have room or you don’t have time… you do have room and you do have time. What I’m going to give you today is a video showing you an off-ice warmup that you can do every time before you go on the ice. Now, every goalie doesn’t need to do this, only the goalies that actually want to win the game for their team and the boys that don’t want to have to put a bag of frozen peas on their groin four times a year.
You should be doing this. Everybody else, you don’t have to watch.
If you want the visual of this warmup, check this video out on YouTube here >> https://youtu.be/IAZHXfv–KU
So at all the pro and elite camps I worked at last summer I’d snag the guys early in the morning before they went on the ice and have them do a dynamic warmup. A lot of them had a dynamic warmup and it kind of would look something not so great. So we worked on things, we thought about how we were moving, we got good quality.
Then the next day, they’d be showing up on their own bright and early because they noticed a difference how they felt not only going on the ice but also when they came off the ice, the next day waking up getting out of bed. So, this is the kind of warmup you should do.
We’re going to start with a self myofascial release just using a lacrosse ball. It doesn’t have to be lacrosse ball but that’s the thing I hear, “Oh, I don’t want to sit on the floor in the dressing room, it’s gross.” Okay fine, you can sit out somewhere, you can sit in the lobby, there’s a bar here at this rink. You can sit in the bar (and just don’t have a pop). There’s places you can do it.
So we’re going to go through a little self myofascial release. Here we go.
If we start with our must do’s, the first one is going to be the bottom of your foot. So getting right from your heal, to the base of your toes, all over that bottom element of your foot.
That’s number one.
The second one that you must do is sort of the upper part of your glutes. Not on the part you sit on, but kind of up in where it attaches almost at your low back. So if we sit down, you have to lean back a bit and get that upper part of your glute.
And you’ll spend about 30 seconds on each.
The next must-do is your hip flexor. If you sit down and put your legs out in front of you with your thumb across the front of your hip and you lift up your leg, you’ll feel that almost like a thick rope of muscle. You’ll put the ball there and lie on that and you’ll just kind of hunt around to find a little tender spot and then you can sit on that for a bit until it kind of melts away and then find the next tender spot.
Spending about 30 seconds on each side.
And the final must-do spot is up on your lats, so that’s kind of the back border of your armpit, so right in there. And you’ll just get that arm overhead. You shouldn’t have the ball on your upper arm at all just the back of your armpit and then down a little into your upper back. You’ll know it when you’re on it.
So those are the must do’s, so that’s going to take you like four minutes.
Other areas you can do, you can do your abductors or your groins, a little hard to do with a lacrosse ball so it’s just better with a foam roller. You can get inside your hip in your iliacus. Those are other spots that you could get, but we’re trying to keep this pretty quick, pretty simple.
Then we’re going to move onto some dynamic mobility.
This is just hip internal rotation. You’re not forcing it, you’re just trying to warm up your hip internal rotator. So you’re going to lay down with you knees bent and feet on the floor. Your feet should be just a little wider than hip width. Then you’re going to pinch your knees in for a three-second hold. Then just let them come out, pinch them back in for a three-second hold. If that’s easy, if you don’t feel any sort of stretch at all, move your feet a little wider. But again, we’re not trying to force it. You’ll do ten like that.
Then we’re going to flip around and do your half-kneeling groin with rock back. So on your hands and knees, get one leg straight out to the side. Now you’re going to keep a neutral back, so not rounding the back as you rock back but just going to sit your bum back.
That feels a deeper stretch in your adductor, right? And then you’ll come forward. So again, you’re not trying to force it. You’re just trying to warmup to find your range of motion. So you’ll just come back, forward, back, forward. Ten on each side like that.
Next one is a 90/90 hip stretch. So this stretches hip external rotation and it stretches hip internal rotation. You’ll sit down with one leg bent in front of you and the other bent behind you. You’re staying nice and tall in your torso and just coming forward at the hips. So you’re going to hold that for 15 seconds then you’re going to come sideways like you’re trying to bring your shoulder towards your ankle on that side and that’s stretching you into hip internal rotation.
So 15 seconds like that then you’ll flip flop sides and do 15 seconds each way.
The next one is coming up into your tall half-kneeling position. So still on one knee with one leg straight to the side, only you come up in a tall torso position. And then you’re just rotating, sort of reaching from your ankle up overhead. So working those diagonal patterns and as you come up following your hand with your head.
Because a lot of the injuries you guys get isn’t just a stretch of the groin but it’s a stretch plus a rotation and that’s how you tear your groin. So you’re going to do six of those each way and then move on.
So that takes about four minutes then we’re going to work into our dynamic warmup. So we’re going to start with walking quadriceps stretch into a lunge where you’re going to get a hip flexor stretch and then a rotation so you’re rotating that pattern, back into a working quad, lunge, rotate.
Notice you should be pushing your hips forward as you stretch your quad.
So you’ll do just three with each leg.
Next, is a high kick inverted reach. It’s going to challenge your balance and give your hamstrings a nice dynamic stretch.
So you should be kicking up without rounding your back then reaching, taking one step kick. Reach through, one more step. Kick. Reach through.
And you’re reaching with your fingers in the front, reaching with your heels in the back trying to make yourself as long as you can. Again, three on each side. So this is a down back and reach. So, again, it’s not just opening up your groins, it’s opening that pattern that includes your abdominals and the muscles that link right up into your upper body.
So you’re reaching, you’re following your hand with your head. You’ll do three facing each way.
The next one is a sumo squat to pop. It’s nice and loose, you’re not jumping as high as you can, but you’re rapidly lengthening your abductors and then rapidly contracting them. Again, three facing each way.
So we’ve done that sort of dynamic warmup now. Now we’re going to get a little more specific with some power production, acceleration, deceleration in the frontal plane.
You’re just going to do your nice lateral hop and stick, not as you can but stick that balance. You’ll hold about three seconds. You’ll push back. Boom. You’ll think again in a quick little push, one more each way. Hold, quick little push.
Just do two of those each way then we’re going to bring it down to the ground. Get into a kneeling position with your torso tall. Then you’re going to do, again, like we talked about on the ice, staying tall in your hips but it’s going to be a knee recovery lateral push and stick.
So just do one each way. Think of where your glove and blocker would be. Practice that habit.
That dynamic portion at the end takes about three minutes, so I think that total warmup (math really isn’t my thing) it takes about 11 minutes. You’re going to notice a huge difference on the ice. It’s not going to take you six or eight minutes to sort of get into the flow of the game. It actually gets your energy substrates flowing, gets you using fat as an energy source, which gives you more sustained energy, you’re not going to crash as much.
So now your excuses are gone.
So let’s just go over the reasons why you don’t do a warmup.
“No time to do a warmup,” which you saw we just did a full everything warmup in about 11 minutes.
“I tried your warmup but I was sweating already.” Well, yeah and that’s actually not a bad thing. It gets your energy system mobilized, it keeps you from having that little crash at the beginning of the game or if you ever feel like, “Oh, it takes me the first seven minutes just to get into it.” That’s because your body’s not prepared for the exercise.
The other one I hear, “Oh, my team already does a warmup.” Your team’s warmup probably sucks because I’ve seen a lot of team warmups and maybe I’ve seen one or two that are really, really good. So do your team warmup, you don’t need to go on a protest or anything. You can do the team warmup but you should still be hitting those goalie specific elements that we talked about because it is important to just get you going so you’re ready from the puck drop to make that first save.
The other one you’ll say is, “Well, I’m not trying to make it to the NHL. I just play for fun.” Yeah and winning is fun and not getting hurt is fun, so it’s still a habit that you should have.
By way of a bonus tip, I think it would if you’re only going to do one element of this whole warmup, so if 11 minutes just really is out of the question and I appreciate for some of you it is, just do the dynamic mobility part. So the part where we did the down and the back and reaches. That will only take about four minutes and it will make a really big difference both on the ice and the day after a game when you’re trying to roll out of bed. So that would be my suggestion there.
When you do a dynamic warmup off the ice, it unlocks the mobility that you have. It doesn’t expand your envelope of mobility training, that’s what that butterfly challenge will do, but it unlocks the mobility you have so it’s really important that you do it.
Go download the free butterfly challenge, it takes less than ten minutes a day to do. It’s a 14-day challenge. Like I said, it’s free. I’m going to put the link below so you can go snag it there but do that. It works on tissue quality and then mobility as well.
If you found anything particularly helpful in this video, leave a comment below.
This is what I was thinking of doing, a video that shows a dynamic warmup or a pre-game warmup or pre-practice warmup for goalies who have strained their groin in the past. If you want me to make that video leave a comment below saying, “Yes, make that groin strain warmup,” or not a groin strain warmup because we don’t want to strain your groin. You know what I mean.
But if enough of you post there then it makes it worth my while and I’ll put a video together like that. But otherwise, I will catch you next time.