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The correct execution of any exercise is extremely important.  Consult with a professional trainer before trying any of these exercises on your own. Performing an excercise incorrectly or performing an exercise designed for an adult (such as free wieghts) can lead to serious injury or harm.

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Remember This …

Work on building your lower body, especially your thighs and calves. The stronger your legs, the more power you can generate in your skating stride.

 

Goalie Strength Training Excercises

1.) Pull-Ups vs. Lat Pull Machine: With a pull-up, a person uses their own body weight; this creates excellent body awareness, more importantly pull-ups require a great amount of abdominal strength (keeping the abs tight keeps you from swinging). The lat pull machine lacks these two important features.

2.) Push-Ups vs. Bench Press: Push-Ups again require a person’s body weight along with lower body stabilization and contracted abdominals. Lying flat on a bench is a very non-athletic position and requires almost no leg or ab strength.

3.) Lunges vs. Leg Extension: Lunging requires a lot of balance and coordination along with strength from the glutes, quads, hamstrings and abs since you are standing and moving forward during the exercise. The leg extension does one thing; isolate the quads. Unless you want to walk around like Quadzilla there is no place for the leg extension in athletics.

4.) Squats vs. Leg Press: When done correctly no other exercise will develop more leg power than the squat. Since they are done in a standing position they require balance, stabilization, coordination, along with ab and back strength. The leg press lacks all of these factors.

5.) Hang Cleans vs. Shrugs: Hang Cleans are an explosive exercise that develops fast twitch motor units in the muscle. It is a full body exercise. Shoulder Shrugs isolate one muscle group the trapezious and involve little athletic ability to perform. Forget the shrugs!

6.) Squat Press vs Seated Shoulder Presses: Many athletes like to perform the seated dumbbell shoulder press. Try standing up and hold two dumbbells at your shoulders, squat down to 90 degrees as you begin to rise explode with a Dumbbell shoulder press using all your momentum. Compare these two exercises and you’ll see there is no comparison for athletic development.

7.) Box Jumps: This exercise can’t really be compared to anything but they are essential for goaltenders. This is a primarily explosive fast twitch muscle exercise excellent for the position of goaltending. If you don’t have a plyometric box try using a picnic table or anything that is 2-4ft high and stable.

8.) Running/Sprinting Outside vs Treadmill: Running outside a person encounters many different types terrain, different degrees of incline/decline, lateral movements and you control your speed in an instant. A treadmill may incline a bit but they can only go so fast with a gradual speed incline, they can’t decline, lateral movements are limited and the terrain is always the same. Plus treadmills are boring and expensive. Try and find a hill near your house and sprint up it, do shuffle and crossovers for lateral movement work.

9.) Mountain Biking vs. Stationary Biking: One of the best exercises a goaltender can do is mountain bike. Biking targets many of the same muscle groups that are used in skating. Invest a few hundred in a bike and ride it everywhere like lakes, parks, take it off the beaten path up and down hills. You wont even realize your training. Stationary biking is similar but involves no balance, no unique terrain and is very boring!

10.) Jumping Rope: This is another exercise that can’t be compared to anything. It is excellent for developing hand eye coordination, accuracy and endurance and you can purchase one for about $10. I recommend to every athlete no matter the sport to get a jump rope and use it.

Why are these movements so important to master? Movements such as the ones listed above focus on improving an athletes cardiovascular endurance, strength, stamina, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. The changes that occur through these movements are essential to athletic development. Once you master these 10 movements an effective strength program will introduce variations of these movements to add to the program for more advanced training.

Exercises such as bicep curls, leg extensions, leg curls, bench press, most weight machines and other body building movements have no place in a serious strength and conditioning program because they either work only one joint at a time and/or put the body in an non-athletic position like laying down or in a seated position.

So how do I get started in a strength and conditioning program? Be creative! Strive to combine exercises in groups of two to three at a time. An example would be lunge for 20 steps with a challenging weight immediately followed by a set of pull-ups to failure repeated 3 times. Another example would be plyometric box jumps for 20 reps into 10 hang cleans and finish with a set of push-ups to failure repeated 3 times. The variations you can come up with are endless and always keep in mind that routine is the enemy of progress. Change up your training by sometimes doing higher reps less weight, lower reps more weight, long rest or short rest, order of exercises but always strive for variance.

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REMEMBER THIS...
Dryland training is very important. If you have a net at home and 10 pucks, you can fire away all day. That’s always good practice for when you do get on the ice.

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