00:32 – Noah asks what exercises for a lacrosse goalie can be done inside if you don’t have time to throw the ball around.
00:50 – Coach Edwards suggests thinking about playing lacrosse when you’re not actually playing.
01:14 – Coach Edwards shares personal experience of visualizing to prepare for the Olympic games.
02:16 – A study of free throw basketball players proves that picturing your game is just as effective as playing.

Coach Edwards here with LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com. If you haven’t taken advantage of getting on board LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com, I totally suggest you do. I’ve got so many hours of footage there for coaching, answering a lot of the questions that I answer here, but even more. Stepping to the ball, goalie communication, clearing, you name it, it’s there.

We got a question from Noah. Noah asks:

“Hey Coach, I was wondering if a goalie can do more exercises inside if he or she does not have time to throw the ball around. This would be really helpful because I have a packed schedule most of the time.”

Noah, great question. This kind of goes back to the question Rhiannon asked a couple of answers ago, but the number one thing you do when you’re not playing is actually think about playing. The mind doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined feeling. What I mean by that is if you’ve ever gotten up in the middle of the night from a bad dream, and you were sweaty and you were stressed out, the question is why. That dream wasn’t real but your body treats it as real.

This was also a technique I used when I was competing in the Olympic games was taking the time visualizing yourself playing correctly. There’s tons of time during the day where you can just take a moment and focus on one aspect of your game. Maybe it’s like an off-stick low shot and you visualize moving to that properly with lightning fast reflexes, creating some sort of audible cue like “pop,” or “snap,” almost like a comic book where they’re like, “BAM, KAPOW,” whatever it is.

Just visualizing over and over and over again. When you do that, ten repetitions, do multiple repetitions of that one move. Really wire that in, moving properly, seeing the ball coming at you and moving properly to the ball. That’s going to really help you, and it’s going to really help you improve your game. And it’s not wasted time. A lot of people think if playing on the field is 100%, then me thinking about my game is like 5%. Not true.

There are studies that actually show that the time you spend visually working on your game actually can be almost as effective. It was a great study done years ago about free throw basketball players. So they took three groups of players. The first group took shots, the second group took shots with no ball, and then the third group wasn’t even on the court, and took shots mentally without the ball, and the improvement was incredibly similar. So take that time to mentally think about your game, it’s not wasted time. And that’s going to make you more efficient once you get to practice.

Good luck with that Noah, great question. If you’ve got a question, feel free to leave me a comment below this video. That would be a huge help. Go and just type it right in there. I can answer questions right through there too. But if you’ve got a question I’d be happy to answer yours. Any question about lacrosse goalie tips or drills, you name it, beginners, experts, we’ve got lots of advice. Happy to help you. Coach Edwards here. Talk to you soon.

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