LacrosseGoalieTips.com Podcast

LacrosseGoalieTips.com Podcast

By Olympian - Jonathan EdwardsSportsEducation
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LacrosseGoalieTips.com Podcast episodes

  • How You Can Read Better and Have Better Retention

    Coach Jonathan Edwards gives lacrosse goalies tips on how they can improve their skills as students, which will come in handy as Division 1 players. He shares a lesson he learned from Stanford University about how to read quickly and retain all of the information by building a framework for your mind.

    8 min
  • How Many Sticks Should You Have?

    Coach Jonathan Edwards unveils the golden number of sticks any lacrosse goalie should have in their arsenal: 3. Coach gives tips on how and when to use them and creating equipment consistency. Coach Edwards also shares his philosophy on whether or not buying the most expensive equipment for your goalie will be worthwhile in the long run.

    6 min
  • How Good Should Your Stick Skills Really Be?

    In his latest podcast, Coach Jonathan Edwards advises lacrosse goalies on how they can improve their stick skills. He explains the importance of being versatile in the cage, especially to keep up with the evolution of the game of lacrosse. Coach gives insightful advice on ways to master the techniques that will help goalies lay the foundation they need to make virtually any save.

    5 min
  • How Do I Get Seen?

    Coach Edwards addresses a common question he gets from lacrosse goalies: How do I get seen? He explains that being seen is a byproduct of hard work and learning to improve one's game. If you aren't ready to play your best, then you don't even want to be seen. If you are always trying to make yourself better, good things will happen.

    6 min
  • Have a Plan For Your Lacrosse Goalie Camp Trip

    Coach Edwards talks to goalies about how to determine whether or not a lacrosse goalie camp will be right for them. He stresses the importance of having a plan to work on one specific aspect of your game and the different ways you can make sure that the camp you're going to will be able to provide you or your goalie with the right counsel.

    4 min
  • 2014 Division 1 Lacrosse Finals

    Coach Jonathan Edwards reflects on what the Division 1 Lacrosse Finals prove to him – the evolution of the game of lacrosse is leaving goalies behind. As technology for shooters becomes more advanced and shots get faster and faster, Coach breaches the controversial subject of better protection for goalies and a change in the way lacrosse goalies approach the game.

    5 min
  • Podcast – The #2 Thing You Can Do To Get Better Faster
    0:11 – Get a stick in your hands that’s about 40 inches long to improve your hand strength.
    0:55 – If a stick is too heavy, you don’t develop the right muscles in your hands to control it.
    1:31 – Find a wall and a ball and get yourself in the ready position to throw with.
    2:07 – Using tennis balls is a great way to practice without your gear in athletic stance.
    2:43 – Coach Edwards advises goalies to look for nice, flat walls to bounce balls at yourself.
    3:15 – Not having good stick skills can come back to haunt you, so improve them before it’s too late.
    3:51 – Keep a stick with you in the car and bring it out whenever you can to practice.
    Introduction
    Hey there. Coach Edwards at LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com and we’re going to talk about the #2 thing you can do to get better faster.
    Get a Stick in Your Hands
    The #2 thing you can do to get better faster is to get a stick in your hands. I recommend it doesn’t have to be your goalie stick, it can just be a short stick. For girls, you want to have a short stick with a 40 inch length. Unless you’re tiny, then you can go shorter, but you want basically an immense pocket in that stick. You want a pocket that’s going to help you get your elbows up away from your body. It’s going to improve your hand strength and things like that. Don’t worry about jumping to a goalie stick.
    Develop Your Hand Muscles
    The goalie stick is really heavy. What I find is that if a goalie stick is really heavy for you, you don’t develop the right muscles in your fingers and your hands that really help you control that stick, so I’d like to see you have a short stick in your hands. The same is true for the boys. I would say 99% of the boys that I coach can benefit from just using a short stick. Like a 40 inch attack shaft, unless they are, again, young and small. You can go shorter, 38, 36 inches. You name it.
    Find a Wall and Throw
    What you want to do is you want to find a wall and a ball and you want to basically throw with and cradle with your hands in your ready position. So if I said get in the cage and get your stick in your hands, you would have your top hand up at the throat and then you would have your bottom hand, depending on your size, about 12 to 16 inches apart. What you want to do is you basically want to get in your ready stance and you want to be close to that wall. You want to be like 10 feet away.
    The Benefits of Tennis Balls
    Tennis balls work great. I used to do this in my parent’s kitchen against the silverware drawer in their kitchen. I would take a tennis ball and my stick and I would just watch tv and throw the ball. I would basically throw. I wouldn’t worry about stepping too much, as much as being in athletic stance and just moving and just being used to the ball. I would throw the ball so that it bounced back at me at different positions so I would have to adjust and move accordingly.
    Practicing With Equipment
    If you can get outside and get a wall, like near where I live there’s a middle school that has a really flat, nice, brick wall. There’s also a grocery store and a gas station. There’s a gas station that I used to go to right across the street from my mom’s house where I would throw lacrosse balls to it. But when you’re throwing lacrosse balls, you really need to get a helmet on and get a cup on and your gloves. Tennis balls are nice because you really don’t need anything and you can stay pretty safe, and you can start to really rifle that ball.
    Practicing Alone to Improve Stick Skills
    If you don’t have someone to shoot on you and you don’t have that advantage then get your stick in your hand and get working on the wall and improving your stick skills. As I mentioned in an earlier podcast,
    5 min
  • Podcast – Tips on the 3 Keys
    Coach Edwards gives lacrosse goalies advice on how to use his 3 Keys to Making Every Save as a platform to improve their performance and turn bad saves into great opportunities. By analyzing whether or not a goalie saw the ball, knew where it was going, and moved properly, they will be able to determine the areas that need more work and bring their game to a whole new level.
    0:15 – Coach Edwards introduces the 3 Keys to Making Any Save.
    0:48 – Keep your cool and break down the reason the ball got by you.
    1:16 – If you can’t see the ball you can’t stop it, so why couldn’t you see the ball?
    1:42 – Do you know where the ball is going? Learn to recognize the average shot.
    2:59 – How did you move to the ball? Some tips on moving more efficiently.
    4:11 – Parents and coaches can help goalies keep a positive mindset and improve their performance.
    Introduction
    Coach Edwards here with LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com and I am driving, spending a lot of time in the car, so I’m going to start ramping up the podcast with some tidbits for you.
    The 3 Keys
    The first one that I want to talk about it the 3 Keys to Making Any Save. You may have heard me talk about this before on the blog, and I want to touch on it here. The 3 keys to making any save. The first key is you’ve got to be able to see the ball. If you can’t see it, you can’t stop it. The second key is you’ve got to know where that ball is going. And the third key is you’ve got to be able to move to it.
    Breaking it Down
    The bottom line here, and I’m not going to go into all the details on each of the keys right now, but the gist of it is that every ball that goes by you, meaning goes in the cage or hits the pipe, you can break it down as to, “Well why? Why did it go behind me?” That’s the question. Every goalie needs to not get mad about the shot that went by them, but they’ve got to look at it critically and say, “Okay, why did that ball go by me?” Not, “I suck.” That shouldn’t be the first thing that goes in your head. The first question should be why. Why did it go by?
    Seeing the Ball
    Did you see the ball? If you can’t see it you can’t stop it. So if you’re screened, maybe there’s something that you can do to adjust your stance a little bit to see around a defender that might have screened you. Maybe they just had a really awesome play where there were guys in the way, girls in the way and you couldn’t see the ball. Whatever. Why couldn’t you see the ball? Now you get a productive answer that you can fix.
    Knowing Where the Ball’s Going
    Number two. If you saw the ball but you still didn’t stop it, did you know where it was going? Did it come out of the stick funny? Did it come out of the stick a different way than you’re used to? I used to get shot on by a coach in practice a lot who, he was too busy coaching and didn’t have a really good stick so he had this really shallow pocket. So the ball came out of his stick a lot differently than the balls I saw in a lot of games. So finally I got an assistant coach to shoot on me or I got one of my buddies to shoot on me who had a much better stick.
    Recognizing the Average Shot
    Remembering in high school, we had a kid on our team, an attackman named Zach Corkman, who is one of the leading scorers in our league and he had this crazy pocket in his stick, super deep, had this crazy lip on it, and I figured if I could stop shots from Zach I could pretty much stop shots from anybody because the pocket in the stick was really weird. But even then, I got used to his stick and the way the ball came out of his stick was different than a lot of the players I saw. So you’ve got to figure out, you’ve got to be shot on in a way that’s around average for what you’r...
    6 min

About LacrosseGoalieTips.com Podcast

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Follow Coach Jonathan Edwards as he provides tips and advice on how to improve your skills in the world of lacrosse.