A few weeks ago I wrote THIS article showing you goalies how to use the medicine ball to overload your off-ice agility drills. Do you remember that? If not, you better check out what you missed.
The MB is a great tool for skaters and goalies alike and today I want to show you a few more exercises that illustrate how exactly it can be used to give you a strong stable torso, help you stay square to the shooter and build more power into your lateral crease movements.
Here Are 3-More Goalie MB Drills (VIDEO)
If you cannot see the video in the player above, just click here
http://youtu.be/z2LODv-DHFo
1) Recovery Lateral Push – a static load for your torso and arms to stabilize while overloading your legs and teaching you to stay square to the shooter.
The focus on this drill is to get your powerful lateral push while keeping your torso square to the shooter. You will hold the MB out in front of you and keep it right there, it should not move from your midline.
Can you see how this puts more load on your torso, but also forces you to use your legs for the movement and your core for the stability while letting your hands remain still.
If the ball is moving around as you begin learning this drill, that tells you that either you are not controlling your torso OR that you like to use your hands to stabilize. Neither one puts you in the optimal position to make the save.
Start with 3 sets of 6 reps on each leg.
2) Lateral Bound – using the MB as a driver to put more load into the pushing leg.
The sole purpose here is to load up the driving leg – we are not worrying about your position in net, we are trying to overload the deceleration-to-acceleration transition on the pushing leg.
You will ‘throw’ the ball over the pushing leg and then explode off that leg – leading with your torso and the ball – and repeat on the other leg. Ultimately you would like to link these movements into powerful continuous bounds side to side.
Start with 3 sets of 3 reps on each leg.
3) MB Chop – as a dynamic perturbation for you to stabilize against, this one is more of a pure dynamic core stabilization exercise.
To emphasize the hip and torso, I like to start with an inline half kneeling position (see the video) – some of you will have trouble even holding this position without the chop.
Think of chopping from above your shoulder diagonally to your opposite hip bone. Keep your arms rigid and make sure you chop in each direction with each leg forward. Again, it sounds confusing, but the video shows you exactly what to do.
Start with 2 sets of 6 each diagonal, each leg forward.
Cheers,
M