Simply Intense
I sprung up out of bed as the alarm rang out throughout the room. Another cracking summer morning, raring to get out to the pitch for an early morning session with one of my goalkeepers. The night prior I mapped out what I had thought in my mind to be a very strong training session. It had all the bells and whistles...footwork, mixed up with handling, with fancy movements in between, ad nauseam. In my mind it was going to be an awesome session!
On the way to the pitch I had to check myself... I couldn't push myself to do the session as I planned it. I had enough...the words 'too complex' ringing around in my head. I started from scratch. Wiped the slate clean, and thought about the basics. I recalled the summer months in Sydney during my youth, when my Coach would have me working the pre-season double sessions every day at the local park.
There were no fancy goalkeeper drills that I could recall with my coach...no overly technical drills. The goalkeeper training sessions were simple. Simple handling, simple footwork and diving drills, basic distribution. Though, one thing that stood out with the training sessions was that they were always extremely intense! I remember the intensity vividly, and my body remembered it the next morning in spades.
Repetition is the mother of skill. It's an age old adage. I've found over the years, training goalkeepers all around the world that the the basics always hold the most weight. The fancier you get going with your goalkeeping drills, the more elaborate, the more convoluted the training session becomes. Too many complex movements and we miss the point of whatever the goal of the session was in the first place.
I conduct the same sets of drills for any age group, though I vary and incrementally adjust the intensity. I believe in progressive overload, I know how powerful periodization can be and I value keeping it simple. Keeping the sessions simple, dependent on the goal of the session, while incrementally upping the intensity on a session per session basis in a periodized fashion, has over the years allowed me to take youth goalkeepers who were playing grassroots soccer, and have them transition into higher competitive youth levels of play, in a little under a year of consolidated and repetitive work.
For me, quality of work is aligned with intensity and repetition. Even with the drills being simple, it is the quality of the work, with intensity and focus that drives progression. Bungled over that agility ladder...do it again. Missed that last shot...let's tweak your footing and body positioning, and do it again. Repetition is aligned with overload. Just like a bodybuilder progressively overloads the muscle for growth with repetition and intensity, so too should a goalkeeper progressively increase the intensity of their actions during a drill.
Another way I add layers of intensity to a session (especially with youth and senior goalkeepers) is incorporating resistance bands and medicine balls into the drills. I believe that as much as you train the technical ability of the goalkeeper, and build an anaerobic base, progressive strength development is just as key to maximize the power output of the goalkeeper. (Might have to cook up a few video's of how this looks in a future post).
In summary:
- Each session should have a quantifiable goal. Number of exercises, number of sets and repetitions with each drill.
- Each session should progressively increase in intensity from the previous session. Adding more sets and repetitions of drills. Leveraging tools such as resistance bands and medicine ball training and adding it into a drill (especially youth and senior goalkeepers).
- Stick to basic technical drills, though always with a focus on upping the intensity across each session.