LacrosseGoalieTips.com Podcast

The post When Should a Lacrosse Goalie Come Out And Hit Someone? appeared first on LacrosseGoalieTips.com.

A question I get every season is, "When it is ok for a lacrosse goalie to leave the crease and deck somebody. Well this week, I've got a cool photo sent to me by a dad in Virginia. Great shot of a goalie leveling one of those lame attackmen. :)

There is a right time and a wrong time to come out of the crease. Also, there are times that work when you are in Junior High School but don't work when we're older in High School and beyond.

While it may get frustrating, and you may want to just check everyone on the field, Coach Edwards talks about when is the right time and when is the wrong time to make that hit. He lays out the benefits, and the costs, to making that play and how it can affect your team.

Thanks so much for the photo Coach. And if you have a photo you'd like to share with Coach Edwards, by all means, send it to him at [email protected]

Coach Edwards has just released his new audiobook "Visualization Skills for Lacrosse Goalies". In this hour long audio Coach Edwards reveals the tips he learned as an Olympic athlete and how visualization not only made his Olympic dreams come true, but helped him become an All-American and a Division 1 recruit in lacrosse. For athletes, parents and coaches who want to become better fast. This audio is for you. You can check it out here: Visualization for Lacrosse Goalies

Are you a member of Lacrosse Goalie University? If not, why not? Join today. Click here to learn more about the most robust lacrosse goalie coaching resource on the planet.

Can a Lacrosse Goalie Stop Every Shot?

Hey everybody, Coach Edwards here with LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com and welcome to everybody who headed over to AthleteSpecific.com which is one of my new projects, and signed up for the Free Goal Getting Guide for Athletes.

Big shout out this week to new subscribers in Vienna, VA, Brighton, MI, and Clinton, New York.  That's just a handful of a bunch of new subscribers who we have this week.

Listen, this week's questions comes from...well...I got a handful of emails from the East Coast this week and...one of them stuck out to me.  Parents and coaches are watching a lot of college lacrosse these days as we get further into the spring.  With the tournament coming around there are a lot of people clicking on InsideLacrosse.com checking things out, and basically the email I got was saying, "Man the ball moves so fast!  How does a college goalie even have a chance to stop it?"

Here's a couple of thoughts:  1)  If you saw my post The Lacrosse Goalie of the Future Part 1 and Part 2 I talk about some of the changes I'd love to see happen in the game.  But lots of those changes aren't going to happen any time soon.

But in the meantime, the best lacrosse goalies still have one trait in common which is...they believe that they can stop every ball.

You know, as a lacrosse goalie, are some shots harder to stop than others?  Of course there are.  However, a goalie still needs to believe that they need to stop every ball and the best goalies believe that 100%.

So a couple of things...as a coach one thing I try to instill with all of my goalies is that there is no right or wrong or good or bad goals there is only learning.

If there is a shot taken from 20 yards out from with time and room, that's one type of shot.  A guy on the crease who fakes you out of your shorts twelve times...that's a higher rate of difficulty obviously.  But as a lacrosse goalie you want to keep challenging yourself.

I always talk about the three keys to making any save:  You've got to see the ball.  You've got to know where it's going.  And you've got to move to it.  Most breakdowns come down to when a goalie over-commits to make a save and they get themselves out of position and then they don't have time to recover and get their feet set and move someplace else.

Some goalies make amazing saves out of the blue and the best advice I heard about that is from a hockey goalie coach I had years ago named Joe Bertagna who was the goalie coach for the Boston Bruins.

Joe said, "A goalie who makes an amazing save is really a goalie that was out of position."  So while we get excited about the goalie making those saves they were really caught out of position but they managed to recover somehow and get a piece of the ball and make a save.

One of the things that I'd advise every athlete and specifically every parent, because a lot of coaching happens in the car ride home from the game or to the game.  Being a goalie parent is one of the hardest things out there and when you're trying to boost your athlete, one of the things you might say out of love is, "Hey listen, that was a really tough shot, you're not expected to save that one."  You might have said that out of love but the problem is that something we don't necessarily want to keep instilling in our athlete.  We don't want them to think that there are some balls that they should stop and others that they shouldn't.

What we want them to understand is that they will get better to make those saves some day soon.  They may not make it right now, but they need to believe that we're going to get better someday.

If you hear your athlete, here's a little trick that I use with my son who is ten years old.  He'll say what a lot of kids say which is, "I'm so bad at that," or "when this situation happens I always mess it up."  You have to say "cancel, cancel, restart, level up" and say this..."I presently struggle with..."

This is one of the best vocab tricks that you can use in any sport or situation.  Change it to "I presently struggle with."

What does that do?  That reframes the missed goal or the missed save and it basically says that someday I will make that save.  It's a way for the brain to make a switch because that's really important.

Coaches and parents, don't let your goalies off the hook.  Out of love you will say, "You'll get that some day."  Tell them it's going to come.  It's going to happen.  That shot might have been hard today but you're going to get it someday real soon.

Don't say, "Hey...you're not supposed to save those shots.  They're too hard."

We all love the lacrosse goalie who, when they get faked out twelve times on the crease, but they stick with it and they make that miraculous save.  Everybody is cheering and we want to instill that in our lacrosse goalies.

So instill in your goalies a belief that they can make every save.  They might currently struggle with a current type of shot now but that doesn't mean they will struggle with it long term.

As they get bigger, faster and stronger and have more experience, they will make those saves.  So instill that in your goalies.

Then check out www.LacrosseRecruitTruth.com and get a copy of my latest ebook The Ultimate Guide To Lacrosse Recruiting

Lacrosse goalies are the quarterbacks on the field and should therefore be considered as captains for their team.

Now not all lacrosse goalies are "captain" material. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be ruled out of the captaincy just because they are in that position. This isn't like hockey where the Captain needs to skate to the penalty box to converse with the referee to relay information to their bench etc.

By making your lacrosse goalie the captain, or one of the captains of your team, a coach is helping his cause by putting his goalie in a position of leadership. What should come with that position is an additional level of respect by the team and in turn, a level of awareness to what the goalie has to say on the field.

When we rely on our lacrosse goalies to make proper defensive calls it's important that the team respects that. A Captain should earn the respect of team and should therefore be a mini-coach on the field.

This week I got two emails from the same team. They didn't realize that they had written me but one email was from a Coach wondering if they should make their lacrosse goalie their Captain. The other email was from the dad of the goalie in question wondering if there was a reason why a lacrosse goalie shouldn't be a Captain. Seems that the coach, as a rule, doesn't allow his lacrosse goalies to be Captains.

So with all of that to consider, here is this weeks blog post. I hope you enjoy it.

In today’s episode Coach Edwards talks about how you can help your lacrosse goalies be more offensive minded.

If you saw Coach Edwards post on why lacrosse goalies are really offensive players you’ll know just how strongly he feels about creating mobile, threatening lacrosse goalies with great stick skills.

That post created a series of questions about how to do that.  Our Lacrosse Goalie University members have access to hours of coaching footage that discusses ways to improve your lacrosse goalie.  But in today’s post Coach talks about the mindset necessary, and what you need to do to help a lacrosse goalie be more “offensive” minded.

Coach Edwards discusses why outlet passing is so important for lacrosse goalies and what you can do to improve it.

Many coaches don't demand their goalies take time to work on proper throwing technique and proper progression of throwing for distance. Just like a football player, lacrosse goalies are distributing the ball up the field and need to pass short, medium, and long. Just like a quarterback.

In this episode Coach Edwards lays out a quick but effective drill that all lacrosse goalies should incorporate into their practices as well as outlining the importance of creating lacrosse goalies who are an offensive "threat".

The lacrosse goalie starts the offense. (That's after a save or a ground ball of course!) But most goalies rarely practice offensive minded thinking.

In this episode, Coach Edwards discusses why goalies and their coaches need to look at lacrosse goalies as offensive players and how to incorporate them into your practices for better clearing and fast break creation.

Goalies should not be standing on the sidelines doing nothing. They should be incorporated into fast break drills as well as line drills and other offensive sets to help them learn what the offense does, what they are thinking. This work will then carry over into how a lacrosse goalie can better direct their defense.

Are You Looking To Be Recruited To Play Lacrosse in College?

If so, you're going to want to check out the FREE resources over at www.LacrosseRecruitTruth.com