Training During the Holidays

Family events and a high fat diet can be difficult for young athletes to manage.  Goalie Army Academy can help with your training during the holidays in order to ensure that you’re in game form when the puck drops again in January.

Training Management

Making time for training during the holidays is tough for athletes at all levels, and one of the most difficult aspects of being an elite athlete is dealing with friends and family who may not understand your long term goals for excellence in your sport.

When combining travel and time spent with family and friends, with eating poorly for a couple of weeks, it’s easy for athletes to fall out of game shape during the holiday break.  Therefore, even though you may be on the road to visit various members of your family, it is still necessary for you to train regularly.  In order to do so, we recommend getting up early in order to train.  We understand that for many young athletes, getting up early in the morning may be difficult because the holiday break is seen as an opportunity to sleep in.  However, by forcing yourself to train earlier in the day, you are allowing yourself to keep your internal clock and metabolism in check.  Being an early riser will ensure that the day’s events with family and friends are taken in, rather than missed out on while allowing yourself to get your daily dose of training.  In other words, don’t procrastinate with your training.  Otherwise, you’ll be training too hard a couple of days before your first game (after the holidays) which may result in injury or fatigue.

Managing the Holiday Diet

Although training during the holidays is extremely important to ensure that you hit the ice ready to go in January, managing your diet is just as important.  Unfortunately for athletes, the holidays are filled with temptation and an increased potential for making poor choices for their diet.

With family members giving stocking gifts filled with sugar, and forcing extra portions of high fat dinners upon you, a lot of the time the words, “No thank you” are an unacceptable response to your host.  Unfortunately, loading up on fatty foods doesn’t exactly make training during the holidays go any smoother.

Portion control is essential during the holidays, but when faced with so much temptation, it is equally important to limit the intake of various treats.  Grazing can be to your advantage, however, during the holidays, there always seems to be more treats on platters than healthier choices such as fruits and vegetables.

When visiting someone else’s home, consider eating a healthy meal before visiting.  Load up on vegetables, fruits, and drink plenty of water.  This will enable you to arrive at your host’s home without feeling famished.  Doing so will help you to make smarter choices for what you put into your body versus loading up your plate with anything and everything possible if you’re too hungry upon arrival.

If your family is like mine, then you’ll have (at least) one family member who is set on making you obese before you leave their home.  One trick that I have learned along the way is that hosts don’t really care about how much you place on your plate, but that they’ll be happy (and may lower the pressure for you to eat more) as long as you go back for seconds.  Therefore, try placing ¾ of the portions on your plate for your first serving.  And then take the next ¼ as your “seconds”.  Compliment the host as you reach for seconds to ensure that they are aware that you are going back for more.  Hopefully, this will keep the pressure to eat more at bay.

Goaltender-Specific Holiday Training

Like all athletes, staying healthy should be at the top of your list of things to do while training during the holidays.  For some, nursing an injury is at the top of their list of things to do.  For others, it may be more goal oriented.  For example, a goaltender may need to work on their hand-eye coordination, they may want to work on improving their explosive power, or improve on cardio in order to improve their PK performance.

Stretching

The first, and most important thing for goaltenders aside from enjoying the holidays, should be flexibility.  Working on remaining flexible or improving flexibility increases the possibility for goaltenders to remain healthy throughout the next stretch of the season.  Look into doing some yoga from home, or at the gym, and if yoga isn’t possible, dedicate at least 15-20 minutes a day to stretching, as well as before and after working out.

Eye-Hand Coordination

Eye-hand coordination is just as important to ensure that goaltenders are coming back to the rink prepared in the new year.  Working with a tennis ball against a wall for 15 minutes per day will allow goaltenders to keep their mind moving at the same pace as their eyes, as well as their ability to react efficiently.  For eye-hand coordination, we recommend the use of a tennis ball over a fumble ball.  This allows goaltenders to avoid reaching in front of them, and keep their arms moving to their sides in a full range of motion just like in their games.  The fumble ball has its place for agility exercise, but for the need for eye-hand coordination, we recommend using a tennis ball.

Cardio

Running outdoors is great when training during the holidays in order to improve cardiovascular ability.  However, during the winter, environmental conditions may prove to work against athletes.  If a treadmill is not available, consider riding a stationary bicycle if possible.  It’s easier on the joints and therefore great for athletes who may be using the holidays to get healthy again.  Training equipment such as treadmills, and stationary bikes are expensive.  Therefore, a less expensive and goaltender-specific option is a slideboard.  Slideboards are an amazing piece of equipment to help goaltenders when on-ice training is not available.  Mimicking the side-to-side movement which goaltenders apply to the majority of their games, slideboards can help goaltenders to improve their explosive power, agility and foot speed, build stamina, as well as improve their flexibility.

Enjoy the Holidays

Although staying on track throughout the holidays is essential to your overall progression as an athlete, so is making time for those who are important to you, while enjoying the time which brings us together.  As important as being ready and in game form is once you take the ice in January, take the time to train early in the day, make smart choices with your diet, and have a Merry Christmas & a Happy Holiday Season!