Goalie Training Tips: Maximizing the Off-Season

You get out of it what you put into it.  Therefore, if you’re leaving out these goalie training tips, don’t be surprised if you’re left in someone else’s dust this season.

Although the winter hockey season is a long one, utilizing the off-season to advance your technical and physical abilities is essential.  But how you choose to train, and when you choose to do it, is just as important.

Maximize Your Training

Close consideration must first be paid to maximizing the benefits of the training.  Therefore, waiting all summer long before getting a week’s worth of goalie training may not be the best way of accomplishing any upcoming goals this season.  Instead, look at obtaining goalie training which will place focus on steadily making an impact on your game.

Training Frequency

Frequency of goalie training is an essential aspect to consider throughout the off season.  This will allow athletes to ensure that they receive (and benefit from) necessary rest days.  On the other hand, attending a week-long goalie school may enable goalies to stay busy, and receive 5 straight days worth of goalie training activity.  However, depending on each individual’s level of physical ability, 5 days of highly strenuous physical activity may cause more strain on the body than most are used to (especially if you haven’t done much throughout the off-season).

Quality Over Quantity

Technical goalie training should be more than merely getting on the ice, and facing as many shots as a goalie school can shoot at you in a session’s time slot.  Instead, it should be about progressive development and receiving professional coaching.

Training the Body and Mind

Like the body, the mind needs to be trained as well.  Therefore, goalies should train with low amounts of repetitions while on the ice.  This enables them to perform their sets to the best of their technical and physical abilities.  Pushing yourself to do each repetition as hard as you can, applying the best technique possible, and knowing when to take breaks will help goalies to reach their potential when it matters most.

On the other hand, if goalies were to practice sloppy, they will play sloppy.  During our goalie training sessions, we consistently preach that how one practices, will come out in their games.  Merely doing high repetitions of drills will result in goalies losing their grasp of why they’re doing the drill in the first place, becoming sloppy with their technique, and increase their risk of injury.

Application of Visualization Techniques

Without applying visualization techniques, goalie training becomes counterproductive to students.  This is because they become focused solely on stopping pucks rather than all of the steps necessary to be in position on time to be ready to react to shots.  Implementing a system which enables goalies to become efficient in everything that they do on the ice is essential to their development, especially during the off season.  But like physical training, goalie training needs to occur regularly throughout the off season to maximize its benefits.