A couple weeks ago, I was having lunch with my wife on a Sunday before the Stanley Cup Final and I received a phone call from a high-profile NHL agent. He was headed to Las Vegas to attend an arbitration hearing and wanted to discuss one of his goalie prospects in respect to his training. “I just want to make sure he’s doing goalie-specific exercises,” he said. I thought to myself, and responded, “He’s doing goalie-specific movement patterns — there’s a difference.”
A few weeks prior, I brought a couple of my goalies together for a quick water-cooler discussion. Both goalies are draft eligible and more than likely will end up in an NHL system. “How has single-leg, eccentric and explosive training changed your game?” They both agreed that prior to fully understanding the value of training to improve movement patterns and to oppose injury, their training regimen was primarily flexibility complemented by strength training. Now, their core principles revolve around strength training, and they complement that with flexibility.
It is that understanding and attitude shift that will allow goalies to remain fundamentally sound deep into games — specifically during moments of disadvantage in the defensive zone.
To train most appropriately, we must reverse engineer the goalie stance, identify the muscles involved in the T-cut, shuffle, C-cut, butterfly and full recovery, make them long and strong, and then improve your fitness. Let’s get to it.
1. FACT: Your legs work independently and in opposition to each other. The goalie stance has two primary movers — the lead leg and the drive leg. One leg will shorten its muscles and act explosively while the other will elongate its muscles to gain distance and then prepare for deceleration. That, ladies and gentlemen, is very complex. You cannot train primarily on TWO FEET for this simple principle alone. Your training regimen should be 80 percent single leg, 20 percent double leg.
2. FACT: Adductors (groins) and hip flexors get the most attention, but your spinal erectors and glutes need the most strength. It doesn’t matter what sport you play — when you become fatigued and bend over, it increases your odds of acquiring injury. To keep your chest up, you need strong spinalis and longissimus muscles. These muscles keep your chest (crest) upright so your hip flexors and adductors can function in conjunction with your abdominals rather than independently and desperately on their own. By strengthening your glutes to further endure elongated single-leg squatting, you will be able to maintain proper posture long into the defensive zone.
3. FACT: Too much flexibility leads to instability. Instability is another term for joint weakness. If you are going to pound on the flexibility, you better be equally committed to getting long and strong. Get on one leg, get low and get one leg outside your center of gravity. Ninety percent of the time, your lead leg will strain first — but not on the first movement — always the second push. POST, POST, POP.
4. FACT: Goalies get hurt because they get tired. They typically don’t get hurt because they’re inflexible. They don’t get hurt because they’re out of position. They get hurt because their opponents break them down, they lose form, lose mechanics and lose the ability to function as an efficient upright human. If you want to be as fit or more fit than the skaters, you will need to train like the skaters. Sprint intervals, to be exact. Sprint five seconds, rest for 10 seconds, and repeat four times. That will take one minute. Then stretch your adductors and hips for one minute and repeat. Start with three sets and add one set per week until you are a complete machine.
Lastly, here’s some $5,000 advice I’ll give to you for five cents. About a decade ago, the Los Angeles Kings (and later Phoenix Coyotes) had a goalie who had more helmet saves than seemingly anyone in the league. As if the puck had eyes for his finely airbrushed Hollywood helmet, he took more pucks to the face than any goalie coach or trainer had ever seen.
He didn’t have any concussion history and his vision was 20/20, but let’s be honest, one man can take only so many 100 mph blueline slappers to the cage. So, we checked his stereo vision. Stereo vision is your eye’s/brain’s ability to recognize 3-D objects relative to their depth and distance from you. Guess what? He didn’t have any. He went ahead and got Lasik surgery the next week and never unwillingly took a puck to the head again.
Moral of the story: Sometimes you think you’re doing everything right. You have perfect sightline on the puck, and you make the save. But if you let one outside opinion help you along the way, it just might make things a whole lot clearer.
