Effective Body Movement

There’s a HUGE difference between getting beat by a good shot and getting scored on because the goalie didn’t move effectively.

Let me explain more in depth…

I’m constantly telling young goalies to attempt to get their lead foot outside the ball. 

It’s not always physically possible. But it is possible to try. Attempting to get your lead foot outside the ball gives a goalie 2 major advantages:

• 1.) It brings more of your body to the party - a goalie’s stick only covers a small portion of the net. It is a tool used to help us make saves but it isn’t perfect. Sticks bend, they get deflections and they often just miss all together. By bringing more of our body to the ball we are providing a safety net if our sticks fail us. Or worse yet, our hand eye coordination fails us. A save with any part of the body counts just the same as a save with your stick.

• 2.) Hand eye coordination improves drastically the closer we are to the ball. If the ball is outside the frame of our body, it becomes increasingly difficult to make saves with just our hands and sticks. By getting our lead food outside the ball, we are actively improving our hand eye coordination. With each inch we move our bodies closer to the ball, we are improving the likelihood of a save (I have no science or data to back this up but this fact is 100% true for me and my personal hand eye coordination).

Moving effectively to the ball increases every goalie’s opportunity to make a save (you’re still going to get scored on, I promise). By increasing that opportunity to make saves, younger goalies will learn a lot faster about how to track the ball in the air and improve their hand eye coordination in the process. Older goalies will help themselves identify inefficiencies in their game like getting locked up with their hands or dragging their feet. 

!ATTENTION! You can move effectively and still get scored on! There is a 50/50 chance statistically speaking. The best goalie in D1 college lacrosse last year finished at 58% save percentage. Younger goalies ask me all the time about what I work on with college goalies. Effective body movement is one of the top 3 things I structure my training plans around - FOR ALL AGES AND SKILL LEVELS. 

By being a goalie that moves well in the net, you are also going to force more missed shots. Lower shooting percentages for offensive players means less shots on net, less shots on net means less opportunities for goals. I think a goalie’s ability to make a shooter miss is something quantifiable and a stat that should be tracked!

Want to make more saves? Pay close attention to how you move your body!