Timestamps

00:17 – Zach asks a question about improving his skills in a short amount of time.
01:13 – Coach Edwards gives advice on wiring yourself to move to the ball and using a short lacrosse stick.
02:06 – Coach Edwards emphasizes the importance of feeling protected in the cage.
03:02 – Letting your body take over and help you be the best goalie possible.
03:22 – Recognizing your own ability to do amazing things if you let yourself.

This Weeks Lacrosse Goalie Tips Question

Coach Edwards here of LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com, I got a great question. Zach asks,

“Hey Jonathan, I’ve come to an interesting situation lately. My school’s varsity goalie has recently moved out of state, leaving me the oldest and most experienced, but I played mostly defense last year so my skills aren’t quite up to par to be able to make a shot for varsity starter. Is there anything I can do over the next month to help get my skills to where they should be?”

Great Lacrosse Goalies Have Great Stick Skills

Well Zach, great question. We can’t turn wine out of water I guess, but we can do a couple of things to improve your lacrosse game quickly. First and foremost, I’m going to assume that if you were a defensemen, you’re probably pretty athletic. So if you’ve got a good base of athleticism that’s awesome. What I’d like to see you do is get a short stick in your hand as much as possible. Start using that short stick. Don’t worry about the goalie stick. Get a short stick, get some tennis balls, get in your parent’s kitchen, it doesn’t matter, and start firing balls away and work on your steps to the ball.

What you’ve got to do here is focus on wiring yourself to move correctly to the ball. So what we’re trying to do is physically remind the body or train the body how to move to all the different spaces around us. Inside lacrossegoalieuniversity.com I’ve got a whole section on stepping to the ball, which I highly recommend. For nine bucks a month you’ve got access to hours worth of video. It will totally help anybody who needs that sort of help.

It’s All About Wiring The Lacrosse Goalie To Move

You want to basically wire yourself and move properly. Then video yourself doing that. Everybody now has a smartphone of some sort, a video camera, GoPro, you name it. Set it up on a tripod shooting at you and focus yourself.  Focus on moving to the ball properly. Because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create that response the body needs to make when that ball is thrown to any of those positions. That’s it.

A Protected Lacrosse Goalie Has The Potential To Succeed

The other thing I would recommend is when you get in the cage, is make sure you feel protected. Because if you don’t feel protected, all that work that you do wiring yourself is going to be overcome by fear, and then you’re not going to react to the ball. You’re going to react out of fear of the ball. And we don’t want that at all, okay?

So get a short stick in your hand, get playing, and then just get out there. Get a buddy to shoot on you in a low stress environment where you can focus now on moving to the ball and again, wiring yourself to move properly to the ball. When it comes time to play and to play when it matters, don’t think of anything. Don’t worry about position, don’t worry about proper step to the ball, just react. Let your body’s innate ability, that fight or flight, like if a car was running at you, what would you do, right? Let your body take over.

What will happen is you’ll get this rush of adrenaline that’s going to allow your muscles to contract faster than they have before. Your eyes will be wide, you’ll be more alert and that will just take over. You will surprise yourself at what a great lacrosse goalie you can be in a short amount of time if you just turn your brain off when it matters and let your body react.

Your Body Knows What To Do In The Cage Naturally

As an athlete you’ve probably had times already where you’ve made a good play, where you were like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just did that!” A pretty sweet play. It could be in lacrosse, it could be in ping pong, it doesn’t matter. But your body, it just shows you that your body has this innate ability to do amazing things. So let it happen.

Great question, I really appreciate it. Leave your comments below, I would appreciate that because that really helps boost the rankings of the website, gets us up to number one. We’ve got some sites ahead of us that really kind of bug me because I don’t think they’re nearly as good as what we do here. So please leave a comment below. Do some shares, hit some likes, that would help me tons.

So again, I appreciate your questions. If you’ve got a question you can email me at CoachEdwards@LacrosseGoalieTips.com. And get on over to LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com and join up over there. That would be awesome. I’ll see you soon. Cheers.