The days of a goaltender being permitted to report to a team in poor physical condition –because those in that position are ‘different’ – are history. Good coaches understand the specialized demands required for success in the crease.
Goalies are the only players who are on the ice the entire 60 minutes of game time. Today, they are seen as the quarterback of the team.
They must be mentally and emotionally solid leaders who demonstrate the daily habits on and off the ice representative of continued development.
They must be the best athletes in top condition.
Examining dryland training, there are three main trainable components fueling a goaltender’s performance – improving fitness, enhancing athleticism, and position-specific training.
Fitness improves flexibility, proper nutrition, body fat, strength and elevates aerobic power.
These are important to health and immune function during a long season and will usually help an athlete perform almost any activity better.
For goaltenders, improved aerobic power provides the endurance to stay sharp throughout the game, decreased body fat allows for faster, more efficient crease movements, and added strength and flexibility permit big explosive movements with reduced risk of injury.
Athleticism builds off of fitness, helping young goalies become more in tune to their body, providing them with general balance, multi-directional movement, and coordination benefits.
There is no doubt that the best athletes make the best hockey players, and the higher fitness and athleticism, the more they gain from hockey-specific training.
Well-rounded athletic skills improve the biomechanics for both common save responses and random, unpredictable ballistic movements to enable game-breaking saves.
Athleticism helps goaltenders be in control during explosive dynamic actions.
Athleticism-building drills and activities can be both athlete-general and position-specific.
To be sure, training is much more than replicating goalie specific movement patterns.
Pushing off laterally for post-to-post movement should be trained, but enhancing athleticism is more complete to help goalies handle all random actions that may come up in any game.
Position-specific conditioning incorporates the ATP-PC system, the most immediate source of energy which fuels explosive efforts like a sliding glove save. Use bursts of maximum intensity for up to 10 seconds followed by 50 seconds of rest.
Goalies use deep balanced squats for leg strength to maintain ready stance and from which to move rapidly equally well in any position.
Strength in the abdominals and low back extensors help sustain a crouch especially in heavy traffic and permits goalies to move across the crease efficiently.
Upper body exercises link back-shoulders-arms to build a body more productive in glove and blocker save responses – see image: Smart Board™ Cross Body Shoulder – Back Pulls.
Many hockey reporters and commentators misuse the word “reflexes.”
Goaltenders use trainable reaction skills that are very different than inherent body reflexes.
Muscle reactivity is trained through single leg balance drills that make muscles more responsive.
Explosive hand-eye coordination drills can improve reaction skills with the goal of speeding the neural loop including recognizing the object, determining the body response, commanding muscles to move, and the muscles complying and acting.
When goalies combine improved fitness, enhanced athleticism and develop their position-specific skills, not only does their individual game get better, the team results directly reflect tangible gains as well.
Teammates depend on their goalie to make reliable saves and when they have confidence in their netminder, the entire team plays stronger defence and offence in front of them, putting more wins on the scoreboard and more cheers in the stands.
Peter Twist, 11-year NHL Conditioning Coach, is President of Twist Conditioning Inc that provides franchised Sport Conditioning Centres, Smart Muscle™ Hockey training products and home study coach education. www.twistconditioning.com. |