By / Sean Murray
Welcome to a new season, Goaltenders.
This year we are going to start with an aspect of the game that sets apart those who succeed and those who get left behind as we will discuss the importance of proper mental preparation and the proper ways to keep your mind focused on the game.
I will start off this subject talking about the area where most good goaltenders fail and that is at their tryouts. The problems that usually occur is that the goaltender already focuses on the negatives or “what if’s” even before the tryout starts and if you are doing this…stop right now as you have already set up failure in your mind. Michael Jordan said it best, “Every time a basketball player goes to the free throw line and thinks he’s going to miss, the outcome has already been determined”, therefore a miss is inevitable. The same goes for goaltenders that look around at their competition and fear it, over-analyze every goal that goes in during tryouts and dwell on it, and worry too much about what team they are on and who they are against. If you are doing any of these, which I know many goaltenders do, it is time to change your philosophy on how you approach your tryouts and games. The following tips should help you out:
PRE-ICE FOCUS - Before you step on the ice, it is important to train your mind and visualize yourself going through the motions of the game such as seeing yourself going into a butterfly, watching the puck into your body and going through slide techniques and post-save recovery movements. One common way that a lot of goalies will do this is by having a towel in your bag and placing it over your head, close your eyes and see yourself doing every movement correctly and also visualizing situational plays such as 2-on-1’s and back-door passes.
PROPER WARMUP - One of the most important aspects in this routine and the one that is most often done incorrectly is that teams just blast pucks at goalies endlessly such as the “Horseshoe” and “St.Louis” drill where shooters are most often not even waiting for the goalie to get ready for the next shot before they have already shot another puck at the net. The negative effect these drills have is that the goalie no longer watches the puck into their body as they should be doing, but use their peripheral vision which is a very bad habit to get into.
The proper way to warm up a goalie is to have one shooter in front of the goalie with about 20 pucks. The shooter will then shoot four shots at a moderate speed (50 to 60 per cent strength) each to high glove (standing), low glove (butterfly), high blocker, low blocker and chest and the goalie must watch everything into his/her body before the next shot. The next drill that should be done is that the shooter will then take five shots a side, low on the ice so that the goalie can work on rebound control and post save recovery as the goalie will recover to the post after each time they deflect the puck to the corner.
These drills, while very simple, will get the goaltender focused on proper technique and visual attachment needed to be successful during their game.
GAME FOCUS - This is most difficult aspect to perfect for most but once you put yourself in a routine that I will explain to you, it will increase your focus dramatically. The first aspect is to keep your mind clear of all the surrounding distractions such as parents, friends and things going on in the stands. Your focus must remain on the ice, not in the stands. The other main concern for a lot of goalies is they get flustered over situations they have no control over such as shot clocks, penalty calls and time left on the clock.
For these situations noted, you have to focus on the game only and you do this by focusing on the puck throughout the game, even when the play is in the other end.
Let me explain.
When the play is in the opposing end of the ice you should think of how you would handle the situation if the play was in your end. Another thing that you should be doing is wherever the puck is you should move your stick to follow the puck, an anchoring technique I use to train goalies to do this is to imagine that your stick is your “second set of eyes”.
The final element that I will teach you is that after a goal is scored on you, this is the time when it is most important to re-focus whether it was a good or bad goal that was scored against you. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter because you can’t take it back but you do have the ability to learn from your mistake by going over what you need to correct on the goal (review), release if you need to, regroup and then refocus on the next shot because if you are still worried about the one that just beat you, odds are another will be going in soon.
I hope these tips help you and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at vangiantsgc@gmail.com. |