Athletic Performance Podcast
The Athletic Performance Podcast: we discuss all things performance-related, with a focus on pushing the boundaries of speed, power, and strength.
Athletic Performance Podcast
Lateral Speed Secrets: Elite Goalkeeping Athleticism w/ Chris Coll Ep 47
Most goalkeeper training focuses on tactics and technique — but what about the physical side?
Coach Chris Coll has carved out a unique niche in the sports performance world: developing goalkeepers like true athletes.
In this episode, we cover:
- Chris’s unlikely journey from American football to goalie coaching.
- Why speed and velocity matter more than just weight room strength.
- The difference between high effort and high output — and why most keepers confuse the two.
- Movement competency: hip turns, retreating, and deceleration.
- What separates elite goalkeepers from everyone else.
- How better athleticism expands the goalkeeper’s “toolbox.”
- Assessing keepers remotely and building trust with athletes online.
Whether you’re a coach, athlete, or just curious about the evolution of performance training, this conversation will change how you see the goalkeeper position.
🔗 Relevant Links:
but getting faster is usually not a bad thing. I don't know anybody who's lost out on, on, you know, opportunities to play or to make incredible saves because they were too fast. It's just usually because you're too slow.
Welcome back to the Athletic Performance Podcast. I am your host, Ryan Patrick, and a little bit later I'm gonna be joined on the line by coach Chris Cole, one of the few coaches in the world. Perhaps the only coach, as far as I know, specializing in goalkeeper performance training. So if you're a coach or an athlete yourself. Let me start by saying there's a lot more to athleticism for goalkeepers than I previously understood, and I think there's a lot of big take home points for any athlete, especially when it comes to multi-directional speed. Today we're gonna dive deep into why speed and velocity should come before strength, housekeepers can develop retreating and deceleration skills that most coaches ignore. And why expanding an athlete's physical toolbox opens up game changing possibilities. So if you wanna know what separates the good from the elite and goalkeeping, stick around. And before we jump in, make sure that you smash the subscribe button. I don't want you to miss future episodes of this. It helps us out. And by the way, if you've already, liked this podcast and subscribed to it, please leave me a five star and a five star only review, so that we can get this out to more coaches, people see it and we can keep making the impact that we are. I appreciate you. Thank you for your time listening to this. I'm not gonna hold you up any longer. Here is Coach Chris Cole.
Speaker:All right, my dude, Chris Cole, we've obviously chatted a lot recently, but, um, I think you've got a lot of experience here. So, uh, let's just jump right in. So for those who don't know about you, why don't you just gimme the quick origin story, um, for you and bring us up to speed.
Speaker 2:All right. So hopefully my memory serves me well. Um, so my name is Coach Chris. I'm out in here, Canada, Montreal in particular. So for those of my Canadian listeners what's going on? Um, I've been in the world of performance and health for going on 13 years. I started working more with the general population. Uh, some clients I still work with to this day, they become more like family, um, but as the next athlete, ex-athlete, as a retired athlete,'cause I'm still doing athletic things. Um, I was involved heavily in American football. Basketball and then any other thing that I could play, um, outside, whether by myself or, or with some friends, I would always do that. So quite active as a young, young kid stayed that way throughout my career. And to this day, we're still trying to do our best to, to stay in shape, but I ended up, uh, having an opportunity to, to do a little bit of traveling when it comes to football. And when it came to football, when I finished high school here, for us it's uh, grade 11. We were the exception to the rule in the province of Quebec. Everybody else has grade 12, so for some reason we like to do things differently. And, uh, after graduating high school here, um, I realized a bit late that I wanted to at least give it a shot to go far with American football. I had pretty much relied on pure skill at that point. Uh, the experience really did pay off and having played multiple positions growing up was super, super helpful. Um, it's kinda like the multi-sport athlete thing, but uh, just in the same sport but different positions. And I had a chance to go to a few camps and I was shown up. I mean, dudes who didn't look the part, uh, but they definitely knew what they were doing. But I also came to realize that they were far more advanced physically than I was. I had never answered into a weight room until I was 19. I didn't really know what the weight room was for other than trying to look jacked. And at that point, I really cared too much about physical appearance. It was more about can I perform on the field? And yeah, so I was playing a bit of catch up. My skill didn't get me as far as I thought it would. Uh, they were, I haven, I had never heard of a 40 yard dash until I was 18. I was like, what's this thing? You just run a straight line. And thankfully, my, my skills helped me to some degree. So it, it didn't completely, uh, result in having someone cross my name off a list, but I wasn't getting all of the attention that I was used to back home. So it made me realize, you know what, I need to take this a bit more seriously and look into all this physical development stuff. And lo and behold, I walked into a weight room, fell in love. The typical story, uh, that most, uh, coaches who were retired athletes experiences, I got hurt, had to make a decision, ended up opting out of, of competitive sports, but was still fresh into the performance lifting world. Started off more as a bodybuilder style training and I realized I, I wanted to get back to my roots and try to make this more athletic. And that's where my first experience with a performance coach, strength and conditioning coach, whatever you wanna call us, um, was when I was 18. And I was like, this is not the same kind of training that I was doing on my own. And that's what kind of inspired me to look into, um, athletic development, strength and conditioning and all that stuff. And I had my first opportunity to work in a gym when I was roughly. Oof, 20 years old, something like that. And I was working with the general population, but I was still kind of doing the athletic work on my own. And I realized that as much as I enjoyed working with the average population, especially with a lot of the different, um, restrictions, limitations, life experiences that they had, it, it forced me to be, um, flexible and to look into some things that maybe had I been become more complacent or not had those experiences, I wouldn't have taken that interest in trying to learn more about those specific situations. But I wanted to dive deep into athletic development again and see if I can get into that world a little bit more from a coaching standpoint. And there was a crap load of information out there, guys that, uh, I know you're familiar with Mike Robertson. Uh, Eric Cressey. So this is when, uh, they were a lot more involved on the article side of things, or we didn't have Instagram, or at least it wasn't very popular. So I was getting all of my information there and I was like, Hey, you can, you can actually make something out of this. You can be involved in sports, uh, but not necessarily as an athlete from a coach standpoint. And started doing that, I started working at a performance gym in our area, which was like Disney World for athletes. I had never seen a gym with 50 yards of turf inside. They had this, uh, rig section where it was the American Ninja Warrior, um, I guess craze we had. The whole like rig situation in that gym was so cool. And yeah, man, I was actually, I felt like I was at home. Worked a lot of hockey players. We have a lot of hockey, well hockey's quite popular in, in Canada, but Montreal's got a huge hockey population, American football. So back to my roots. But I think five, six years into me being more involved in the performance side of things is I, I had my first goalkeeper. I. Who I was not looking for. It was just somebody who needed some training. He lived down the street and I was the performance guy. So I had the opportunity to train him and I trained him like my hockey players and my football players. And he got better. Uh, just'cause most goalkeepers, uh, don't really have much of a physical development background to begin with. So didn't really take much to, for him to get better. But then I started getting more keepers for some reason. Um, and then I started asking some questions. I started hearing the responses. And to be honest, they were both, uh, non cohesive. The answers were really just kind of, they didn't, it sounded like they had never been asked those questions before, so they were unprepared. And the answers that I was given, I was like, that doesn't really sound like you know much about what you're doing and if it's actually working, it's just you're hoping for the best. And then the other part was there wasn't much information out there for goalkeepers when it came to development physically. So athleticism, a lot of it is technical and tactical. There wasn't the same culture that the American football culture is known for when it comes to, to lifting weights or when it comes to trying to develop physically and soccer to this day, or football. For those who are watching in Europe, um, it's, it's still something that is, is quite new. It's, it's become more popular. It's, it's, people are appreciating the, the element that it brings when it comes to development and the important piece that it plays in that, in that puzzle. Yep. But it's still quite new, uh, as far as comparing to what the west has to offer in that area, but it's an area that's even less looked into, uh, when it comes to the goalkeeper position. So it's, it's quite nuanced. It's, it's a very interesting position, which while I'm sure we'll get into a little bit. It's, it made me want to look even further into that, and there was a bit of a business, uh, motivation behind it as well as I was one of one. There wasn't anybody who was doing performance training for this population, which made it pretty easy to wanna approach that from a business standpoint, again, because I didn't have much competition as far as those who also, uh, you know, do what we do. And, yeah, man, I started the, the COVID actually forced me to get more involved online. Started some, some Instagram stuff, just posting for the sake of posting. Got some traction, got some haters. Love y'all too. And, uh, yeah, ever since then we've been going strong for a good five, six years of almost working exclusively with goalkeepers as far as training our athletes go. So,
Speaker:yeah. Uh, you're gonna, you're gonna send me all those haters names in the dm and we're, we're gonna, we're gonna troll'em for a little bit. So, uh, you know, before we just like go into this goalkeeper thing, I'm actually, Chris, I'm kind of curious about this because, I mean, I've known you for a little bit. I didn't know you had this American football background, but, um, more specifically, I talked to, uh, Hank Koff a couple weeks ago. He's in the Netherlands, so I'm always super interested in just, uh, physical culture and athletic development in other countries because America is, uh, hyper competitive, I would say, you know, and for, for football players here, American football. Uh, it's like a non-negotiable that you're in the weight room. So has that, has that changed in Canada? Like are the guys coming up now? Are they training more or is it still kind of like you just got these guys who are highly skilled that are able to, to get by doing it the way that you did it?
Speaker 2:I would say it's the, the Canadians have definitely taken a page from the Americans book is, it's something that is almost offered and, and most of the non-school associated sports programs. So depending on the school that you go to, uh, again, I haven't been in high school and university for a long time, but the kids that I work with at those levels is, depending on the school that you go to, you either have a strength and conditioning program, um, that's part of your curriculum or you have to look for that, you know, uh, apart from your school. So it really does vary on the location and obviously the access that you have, uh, both from the educational standpoint. So is it part of the curriculum or not? Um, do they have the funding or is it something that they take seriously? So, right. That really does vary, um, from location to location. But as far as what kids are doing outside of school, I would say everybody for the most part, is aware of the physical development side and either has a strength conditioning coach or has looked up on Instagram or something online for a program to develop physically. So they've taken it seriously. Is it as accessible as the US From where I'm from? I'd say 50 50. Yeah. But people are fully aware of it and its importance and they're, they've taken it more seriously than they have when I was coming up.
Speaker:Yeah. Well, you know, I'm surprised you ever heard of a 40 yard dash, like, what is this unit? But, uh, um, so let's talk goalkeepers, man. So. You, you are like one of one. So, you know, I've looked across the internet, I know a lot of guys, like no one else is talking about this. So when it comes to the physical and athletic development for goalkeepers, we're talking speed, power, strength, movement, competency. What are your big rocks when you're thinking about developing
Speaker 2:them? So, uh, this ruston actually, uh, stems from a quote that I heard first from Bobby's troop. So shout out to Bobby. Um, it's do fast things to do fast things, and for me, my foundation is built off of anything that allows you to express speed, um, or prioritizes velocity. So having started a little bit late in my strength and conditioning career, I went right to the weight room and I, I definitely experienced some, some improvements in terms of my strength, power outputs, even to some degree my speed. But I was still doing some sprint work on my own, but not, uh, a structured as you know, a lot of us are used to now.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:I prioritized kind of making improvements in the weight room before actually prioritizing getting faster or doing more plyometric work. Like things that really did move the needle on the velocity side of things. And I've realized, um, through both experience and also learning from really, really educated people in this field that a lot of the things that you do from a speed standpoint will have a greater impact on the strength in the weight room, uh, instead of the other way around. So I can get a kid super strong and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna, it's gonna carry over to speed. There's a chance, especially if they're sprinting, but if they're just putting all their eggs in one basket and trying to get strong and hoping to get fast, that, that usually doesn't work out as well. Yep. But nine times outta 10, if not 10 times outta 10, if I get a kid faster, they will get stronger and it'll show up in the weight room. Whether or not they're competent in the lift, they just, they can express force at a different level. And I, I, I know that the neural muscular improvements that come from speed. A lot of that is, is is still present in a lot of the weightlifting that we do. So I just see that the foundation is not built off of weight room strength. I think strength is definitely a part of it, but I think it more from the speed side of things, the, the strength improvements that come from the changes in velocity that athletes will experience doing speed work, doing plys, doing some power work, which for us, we just term as jumps. Um, not so much the weighted, you know, jump stuff is just, just get jumping in different ways and try and improve power that way. But it's fast first. Fast first. Yeah. Slow later.
Speaker:This has gotta be somewhat foreign to these guys, right? I feel like the goalkeepers are kind of like the kicker in American football. It's like they're just off to the side doing their own shit. You know? Like nobody's really paying attention to'em. Like, Hey, these guys, you know, they're just gonna kick the ball through the uprights a couple times. It's like keepers, like they're working on their angles and their little slides and their little skill stuff as you mentioned too. So like, oh, you mean now we gotta run like twenties and thirties? Yeah. So how, like, how foreign is this? Just this whole process to them of like, okay, I gotta like go and I gotta go for some, some distance, but I might only be playing in, you know, six yards of space.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the, the hardest part is to convince'em that going beyond six yards is actually relevant to their sport.
Speaker 4:Mm. And it's,
Speaker 2:it's not relevant in the sense of specificity that, okay, I'm actually gonna have to run 20 meters. Uh, well, depending on the situation, sometimes guys will come out for, for through balls and they have an opportunity to, to actually potentially make a safe Yeah. Nowhere near their box, which means you need to be able to accelerate very quickly. Um, and the distances can vary, but the idea that it doesn't have to be exactly the way that you do it in the sport for it to have some sort of carryover. And that's usually where, um, my athletes are giving me a little bit of leeway if they trust me enough to try something out. So, thankfully, after these five, six years of, of being consistent on social media, we've built some trust with our audience, hopefully, that they realize the importance of speech training. And that usually makes it easier for me to then suggest, Hey guys, we're gonna go further than 10 meters today. It's like, what? I don't, I don't even go, you know, past the six for the most part. No, but there's importance because there are things that you can't develop inside the six yard box that you can develop once you go past those distances. So, um, it's just trying to explain to them that it doesn't have to be exactly what you do on the pitch in order for it to have some sort of carryover. Uh, the second thing is, I don't know any goalkeeper, um, that I've worked with and that's around that doesn't want to get faster. So, right. When you're using things like, hey, movement speed, like obviously the terminology needs to make sense to them, but getting faster is usually not a bad thing. I don't know anybody who's lost out on, on, you know, opportunities to play or to make incredible saves because they were too fast. It's just usually because you're too slow. So. Mm-hmm. Benefits outweigh the consequences, uh, when it comes to speed. So. It's more of a convincing them or reassuring them that, yeah, it's okay that we go a little bit further than what you're used to. And to be honest, a lot of these guys, they like the feeling of, of moving fast. Yeah. It's, it's a sensation that they're not used to, and that's an easy way to motivate athletes, especially from a distance. It's like, Hey, you feel fast? Yeah. Well, let's go a little further. You'll get faster.
Speaker:Mm-hmm. Yeah. I can tell you going slow feels like shit. So, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's it. So I let the speed work do the talking.
Speaker:Yeah. You, it's just kind of, there's like a little bit of comedy in my mind to this because obviously no one has, uh, dumbbells and barbells out on the field yet. We totally associate, you know, getting stronger and power outputs with like, we're going to enhance performance, but yet doing something that's probably a little bit closer in proximity of just actually moving your body fast through space. It's like, you know, I don't know, like, do I really need to run 20 yards? It's like, bro, like literally like this is so much better than, than just squatting a barbell up and down. Like that's great too. Yes. Probably need to do some of that for a variety of reasons. But like the thing, you know, this thing is so much closer to what you actually want to be able to do. Yeah. Um, but on that note, I think you'd probably have to finesse them a little bit more to do more of this like straight line speed than you would say like lateral and, and COD stuff. Because I feel like they would just kind of default to that if given the, the option.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. So this is where people like, uh, Jason fairer, uh, yeah. With the whole game speed model, it's, it's easy for me to ask these guys to do change of direction work and to be honest, we do most of that. When it comes to our speed stuff, it's, it usually is more from a lateral start. Um, there is some linear built into that, but it's something that as long as they're hitting speeds that they haven't hit before, I don't necessarily care if it's in a straight line. Okay. And this is something that. I read recently, I, I think his name is James Smith. Please don't quote me, but he, he was featured on Simply Faso, just flies, uh, Joel Smith's podcast. And he, there was an article that was linked to that and it was something about the three or four things that, um, you no longer hold to when it comes to speed training are the three things related to speed that, um, are either bedrocks for you or you no longer, um, are in line with. And it was something about not every athlete needs to sprint at max velocity, but every athlete needs to run fast. And the, the crux of it was just because running fast or sprinting 40 meters will get you faster at a, from a maximum velocity standpoint. And those are all good things. It doesn't mean that everybody has to run those distances. It's finding that sweet spot saying, where can I get the most bang from my buck here if they were to get faster at a 40? Is that gonna benefit them more than, let's say, getting faster in a game speed scenario? Right. Where there's some change of directions involved, let's say a 10 meter sprint followed by a COD and then going back the other direction for another 10 15. Like, I'm still hitting decent distances and the, the stuff that we're doing is a bit more relevant to what they're gonna experience when it comes to forces and, and joint angle positions and just positions of their body and space.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to the straight line speed work, it's usually used more as a potentiation effect than it is as a full on speed session. Because that's where I may lose guys is Yeah. I wanna try to keep in mind that we're not doing track and field workouts. We're using track and field concepts.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And to get sprint, uh, to get keepers to train like sprinters almost feels, uh, wrong. It's like blasphemy. You can't, you can't do that.'cause it's, it's, it's not close enough related to what we do. But if I can sprinkle in, but. Track, track and field elements, approaches to training to touch on those things and mm-hmm at least they know that it doesn't end after the 20 yard sprint. Now we get into the meat and potatoes, which is gonna look a little bit more like, you know, the demands of your position from a speed standpoint. Then just that, you know, those three or four reps running in a straight line just to prime your system for what's coming next. So, um, yeah, I guess when it's, when we use it more as a warmup, they realize it's not the, the end of the workout, it's more of the, the setting you up for, for success when it comes to the rest of the workout. And then that way I have to do less convincing. We hit our speed work for the day and then we get into, what we're really trying to focus on for the most part, is change the direction, work movement, skin development, and adding in some small acceleration work after, uh, the final movement or the finding link skill so we can add a little bit more speed to our training and make it slightly more specific.
Speaker:Yeah, the James Smith. There's, there were a couple James Smiths in the industry, like simultaneously putting out a bunch of content at the same time. So, we'll, we'll have to do a little super sleuth thing and figure out which one it was. Um, but it reminds me, like, when I hear you talk about this, it reminds me of the, the quote where it's like when a when, uh, uh, measure becomes a target, it stops becoming a good measure. And it seems like there there can be this, uh, tendency to chase top end speed, you know, in and of itself without really understanding like, are we actually, you know, still, are we transferring this to what we need from a, a movement standpoint? Like, yes, they're faster at, at the 40, but is the, is there still carryover in their multi-directional speed, which is the ultimate goal, right? It's, it's a sub maximal effort. But, but are we seeing some carryover? So I guess with that in mind, um, I kinda wanna shift just a little bit, but. What are goalkeepers missing out on when it comes to their physical preparation? And maybe it's like, what do you feel like they're over emphasizing and what are they kind of neglecting?
Speaker 2:So from what I've experienced in some of the conversations that I've had, um, a lot of what I've had to, um, push back on is this idea of conditioning is done everywhere. Everything that they end up doing when it comes to physical preparation looks more like conditioning. So there's very little room for higher outputs, and it's something that, um, I'll usually simplify in saying that high efforts do not equate to high outputs.
Speaker 4:Mm.
Speaker 2:Effort is more of a personal thing. It's more of the act of the will. I am willing to put the effort into this thing, therefore I'm gonna do my best. That doesn't necessarily mean that. The output will reflect that. Right. So some of the examples that I'll usually give guys is, I can put you on a bike. I'll ask that you go a minute as hard as you can. We'll get a wattage giving us an indicator of how hard you actually pushed, what we were able, what were your averages at the end of this minute. Okay, we'll give you a couple minutes to raise to rest and then you'll do it a second time. Your effort may be the exact same, if not higher the second time around. But if your time was slower, the output was lower. So just to make it very clear saying, I don't care necessarily how hard you push, I care about if you actually made improvements in whatever it is that we're trying to, to change or, or to increase. So if the speed got slower, no bueno. Yeah. If the time was longer, no bueno. I don't care how much you sweat and how much it hurt. Mm-hmm. So I'm looking for the output. And when it comes to goalkeeper development, a lot of it just seems to be more fitness related. And that's usually the terminology that they'll use is it's fitness training. Again, not hating on it, but if, if your idea of fitness is to get them fit when the position is more of a speed power position. Right. I think we may be, uh, missing the goalposts here a little bit as far as what should the priority be? Yeah. And what's more supplementary? So it's, yeah, it's just trying to get them to understand it's not what you think you're doing.
Speaker:This guy can't get to a single ball, but he can go all day.
Speaker 2:Well, I'd say it's like, what does that matter? I mean, at the end of the day, most of the time I think the, the, the average amount, the average action time for keepers in a match, 90 minute match is somewhere in that like five to 11, five to 12 minute, maybe even lower depending on, you know, how good your defense is and how poor the other team's offense is. So it's the action time is very little. So you're talking about outputs needing to be at their absolute highest. I don't really see fitness in that number. I don't see the relevance of a, of a test or at least emphasizing it in every single training session and every single drill, right? Where the main goal is to make sure that we are pushing when we're tired and we're not so concerned about the speed of the movement and the fluidity, how, how it's executed. It's more about can you survive this drill? Mm-hmm. And can you survive it for the next 30 minutes to see who's the toughest?
Speaker:Yeah. It's almost a magnification of what I see at like gen pop, right? So I think of like orange theory or some kind of circuit training. It's like, it's high intensity interval training. I'm like, look, babe, there ain't nothing high about this. Like this is a poor ass output. And it just, and, and there are even some of my athletes that are younger, you know, we'll give'em like three rounds. 15 on the assault bike or echo bike and 45 seconds rest. And that's, I that's devastating if you go as hard as you can. Yeah. But they're like, this is like, is this a like a cool down or what? I'm like, I just don't think like you can compute that the intensity that I'm actually looking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's funny you say that. This was, uh, a while back, but I had done, um, I was part of a, an online group program and one of the workouts was, it was airbike and it was a lactate workout. So I was hitting 30 seconds of all out sprints and I had, I had four minutes to rest. And I look at this, I'm like, why do I have so much time to rest? I realized that once I actually put all of my effort into that 30 seconds, that four minutes wasn't enough. No, I was smoked. I only have four reps to do. Mm-hmm. But when you put everything into a rep like that, I don't think people realize what that actually feels like. It feels, it's like the worst thing in the world.
Speaker:Oh, I got, so I'll tell, I'll share a quick story and then we'll move on. But, uh, years ago I was training with James Sebe when he was doing, uh, more of the online coaching stuff for fitness training. So he had this group called Silverback, and he put us all in groups of three. So it was me, TJ Mann, and then we, we had a third guy who, uh, was military but ended up going out and somebody else came in. And then there was another group, which was, um, a couple guys who had been on the podcast. There was Kyle Dobbs, oh, was one of the groups. Uh, he had Karen Halton, and then they had, um, uh, Jesse, Jesse McKen, I think I'm saying that right. Um, another really great coach. These guys were absolute dogs. And so, um, James had this workout program for us, and I remember looking at it, thinking like, oh, this is not that bad. So it was, um, 20 seconds of work and a hundred seconds rest. We got a one to five work to rest ratio. We did three rounds of that. On the assault bike, eight minute rest. And then we had to do three more. Damn it. And James, James was like, all right you guys, he's like, you're gonna compete for max calories, you're gonna add your whole team up.'cause we're all training remotely and you know, the score is the score. So we all went, I mean, crazy hard on this. Like Kyle was like talking about how he was like dry heaving. I was like over the, over the bucket. My legs were so, I mean the pain of the blood leaving my legs. Yeah. Between rounds, eight minutes. I mean, it was absolutely brutal. Probably the hardest workout I've ever done. And it was like, I don't know, two, two minutes, two and a half minutes of total work. I mean, it was, it was kind of pathetic. But um, again, it was that same thing. But you start to put a group of competitive people behind it, you start putting a score on it all of a sudden, like the level we took it to is just absolutely. Devastating. No, I'll never, I'll never forget that workout. I mean, week two when we came back to it, I think I walked like back and forth in the gym just pacing for like 30 minutes of like trying to avoid this thing.'cause I know how bad it was gonna hurt. PTSD. Yeah, I mean it really is. You ever have those workouts? Uh, pat Davidson's Mass is like that too, where it's like, oh, don't talk to about that. That's, that's brutal. I always say it's like the only 30 minute workout that takes 60 minutes.'cause there's a good, uh, 10, 15 minutes of me waiting to start where I'm just like, goddammit. And then there's another questioning, 10 to 10 to 15 minutes where I'm literally just on the ground. Like that's it. Just getting, you know, just trying to resurrect myself. It's the rest
Speaker 2:period that wasn't programmed.
Speaker:Yeah. So back to the keepers, I think this is, um, this is a question I'm kind of interested, but, you know, with respect to movement and movement capabilities, what separates the elite guys from everyone else?
Speaker 2:So a lot of the guys at the, at the top level have their own individual skill sets that they're known for. So for example, Alison Becker, uh, he's known for his one one B one situations. So from, from my perspective, again, I'm, I'm still quite new when it comes to the tactical, tactical element of this. I'm, I'm actually quite blessed to have the opportunity to talk to a lot of coaches who are giving me more insights, and obviously my athletes are, uh, giving me their perspective on these things. So I wanna be careful not to, uh, uh, use wrong terms or whatnot. But from what I've seen and what I've studied, uh, for, for someone like Alison Becker, it's his ability to close distance really well. Okay. Timing his attack. So sometimes keepers will use what's what's called a smother technique, which is essentially just smothering ball. So you're, you're waiting for the right touch and then you're just going. That requires your ability to go from more of a, let's say, conservative approach, trying to time it, uh, think of an, uh, a linebacker in the NFL, just like watching the play develop. And then when you see the hole and the running back hit that hole, you go and meet. Yep. Same thing when it comes to goalkeepers. It's when you see that touch, the, the touch that you're looking for, go for the ball, you smother it. So he's really good at timing that smothering technique when he uses it. Yeah. Another thing is he is extremely controlled despite, uh, moving in these very awkward patterns. Nothing is linear at all. We're talking like curb linear stuff all over the place, but he's still under control. He maintains the same distance between himself and the ball, which doesn't allow for the goal to look bigger at any point. It stays the same size, which makes it harder for the striker to, um, get a clean shot. So his ability to, to be spatially aware and to time his, his acceleration from, you know, whatever the speed he's moving at to. You know, a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Um, so there are some nuances as far as what are some of the specialties that each of these elite keepers possess, but the thing that I see universally is they are phenomenal, um, at linking their skills. So they do a really good job of combining different patterns, like let's say shuffling to a lateral run step, um, or lateral running into retreating pattern. It all just looks like it was just one cohesive movement. There aren't parts to it, it's just one fluid transition from wherever it's that you were to, wherever it is you're trying to go. So they link skills very, very well. Another thing is they retreat well, because a lot of it's more known as the modern goalkeeper where they're, they're a lot more active with their feet. So how you described keepers, at least the perspective that people have. Earlier on in the conversation where it's just like they're just kicking the ball, right? That's more of an old school mentality where they, they didn't do very much, um, from more of like an attacking standpoint. But nowadays is keepers are almost expected to play more with their feet. They're a lot more evolved on the offensive side of things, obviously from where they're situated on the, on the pitch. But you have to be more active with your feet. You need to be more involved from an offensive standpoint. So, um, a lot of these guys will play further off their line whether or not it's a good thing. That's not my, my wheelhouse. I ain't messing with that. Mm-hmm. But they come off their line more, which means there's gonna be a lot more retreating involved in some of these situations. And the keepers that I've seen who were out of position for whatever reason, they have to retreat most of the time. Yeah. And these guys retreat like bosses now, uh, don't ask a goalkeeper to backpedal. That's partly what my job is, is to give them some more tools for that toolbox. But when they have to reposition to go backwards. They do a pretty good job these guys at the elite level. So I'm, I'm quite impressed at their ability to get back to their line or to get back into, in, into a, um, an area of the goal where they are more likely to be able to make a save because they've put themselves in position where the goal, again, isn't as big as it was when they were further off their line. And then the last thing is, I would say less related to movement skills and, and more, uh, of spatial awareness. Mm-hmm. They, there are so much action that goes on in the box here. You almost got the entire, um, offense and defense depending on the strategy in that 18 yard box region. Sometimes, and sometimes it gets as close to the six. That's a lot of bodies to have to maneuver around. Yeah. And a lot of keepers, the, the, you're at a disadvantage, this is probably why they look for taller keepers, is'cause it eliminates the vertical dimension a little bit more. And it's, you, you leave it to where it's more lateral based. If you're five foot 10, you, you gotta have the vert. From both the standstill and more of like a, a stress shortening cycle type of vertical jump aspect, as well as the ability to move side to side. When you're six foot six, that vertical, those vertical related saves aren't as difficult to make. So you need to be a little bit more, um, comfortable with the lateral movements and the lateral change of directions. But they are so good at knowing where to be despite all of the chaos that's going on around'em, the ball's being moved all over the place. You've got bodies that you have to maneuver around. You've gotta keep in mind where you are. And if you close off one space of the goal, the other side gets exponentially larger. So the ability to know where you are in space, despite the chaos that's, that's, you know, present to you, those guys look like they're in complete control. They know exactly where they are. Mm-hmm. And they usually put themselves in a position to at least give them an opportunity to make a safe. Um, so I would say those three linking skills. Retreating abilities and spatial awareness and remaining under control, um, during those moments of chaos.
Speaker:Yeah, I don't think enough people are talking about retreating stuff obviously. Uh, Lee talks about, you know, his 180 series doing some retreat stuff. You got the T step when you go to reaccelerate, but what from a movement, competency, movement competency standpoint are you looking for? Because you said it's not just backpedaling. So what do these maybe sub elite or developing keepers really need to work on when it comes to these retreating skills? Or how do you approach it, I guess? So the first thing
Speaker 2:is that initiation is how do we actually begin the retreating process? And just like basketball, a lot of them are really just used to pivoting. So they're so comfortable being heavy on the feet, which is a different topic altogether.'cause there's a time and place to be more stable.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:But when you are unable to go from a more flat-footed position to being a little bit more on the springy side of things, then you limit your options as far as your ability to unweight and then reposition from where you're standing. A lot of these guys, if they're standing still, they'll just like open up the left or the right foot and just pivot off the, in that case, what will be the lead leg or the, the trail leg rather. Yeah. So we hammer out hip turns like you wouldn't believe. Okay. And I've had keepers, almost 90% of them are like, what's the hip turn for? I don't get it. And you know, thankfully we have some, some videos of people who would use it, whether they knew it or not. Uh, it was done well and others who don't use it and sometimes saves were made just'cause they're freak athletes and they're really good. But other times saves were not made. And I would argue that had you been a little bit faster, I you using hip turn, you would've been in a better position to at least attempt a save. So, we'll, we'll hammer out hip turns. Um, just to understand, uh, the importance of being able to number one, unweight really well. Mm-hmm. Which is really, really common, uh, in a lot of the saves that Coke beers will use. But it's that ability to, to not always be heavy on your feet and to know how to kind of. Switch, that light switch on and off, it's relaxed. And then I'm now more, uh, uh, heavy footed. It's light footed, heavy footed, light footed, heavy footed. So we hammer out hip turns, we hammer out hip turns, and then we, we link that or use other patterns. So hip turn to snap, shuffles hip turns to run steps, hip turns to shuffles, to run steps in the other direction. So we're trying to find ways to, number one, get them to initiate really well and then get them to repeat those initiations, um, you know, in multiple fashions. Uh, you know, one thing that I, I, I learned a lot from American football playing both offense and defense is you have to go to move in all directions. But if you're playing defense, especially if you're out on, you know, as a defensive back, these guys have to be able to move backwards just as well as they move forwards.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:So this is the beauty of having played that sport is as much as it's not goal keeping specific, it's movement specific. You gotta run the backpedal. Sometimes when those guys open up for, you know, uh, longer routes where you notice the speed is being picked up, you can't keep up with the backpedal, you've got a lateral run with them. Once the ball's thrown, now you commit, okay, go find the ball. So it's those transition points from slower retreating skills to faster retreating skills that I see extremely beneficial to keepers because sometimes you'll be able to backfill or move backwards, much slower, um, because the play isn't developing as quickly, um, as it could. But in other times, it's like, oh crap, I'm in a bad position. The ball just got kicked across the, the net is open up to the left, to the right. Now I have to bust ass. I gotta, I gotta rip this. Well, backpedaling ain't gonna be your friend. No hip turn. You allowed to run that sucker and you go ahead and make it safe. Right? So it's, yeah, that ability to, to initiate via hip turn and then being able to, to use that and combine it with other skills, phones are going off. Alright, so that's gonna
Speaker:stop. No, no, I love that because I, um, uh, you know, in this quest for like what is optimal for the athlete or what's the best skills or drills or approach, I keep coming back more recently to just coaching my athletes so aggressively on getting back to a base athletic position, having control of your center of mass so that you can reposition and find plant angles to move your body in space. It doesn't matter to me how fast you're going through these cone drills or you're going through this thing. If, if you are not in a position to reposition and get a foot outside of your base of support, it, it honestly doesn't matter. You could be the fastest goalkeeper or athlete on the field and just being out of position is going to have severe consequences. Yeah. So it's, it's like I've almost dumbed it down in a sense to where they understand like. There's a certain level of urgency that I have to this, of getting back in a position ready to make the next athletic move.
Speaker 2:Yep. No, that's, and that's where, you know, we'll use the term set a lot. And this idea of the set position, which is just another term for your base, you know, whatever your, uh, athletic position, universal athletic stance, different terms for pretty much the same thing. So the set position is where a lot of keepers are taught that they wanna make their safes from. And ideally it makes sense, it's your most stable, your most comfortable stance. Um, you can control your body a bit easier that way. But, uh, I'll give you an example is, is some of the drills that we'll do with some of our guys is this inability to be able to control momentum after having built it up and set quickly. So let's say for example, uh, I have a guy go and perform a hip, turn into a double lateral run, and then being able to set immediately after that second step is taken, that second lateral run is completed. You're set.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:I'll watch videos of them when they send it to me and it's like they're stumbling over, they're taking three or four steps to try and decelerate. It's like, that's not gonna work. A shot would've already been taken. Yeah. The idea is to be able to boom, stop, jump stop, whatever you gotta do. Yeah. And then be able to put yourself in a position to then have an opportunity to attempt to save. Because despite how well positioned you may be, sometimes you just gotta take your hat off to the offensive opponent. It's saying, that was a great shot. I wasn't gonna make a safe regardless of where I was. So you're playing against professionals. It's expected that sometimes they're gonna get, you know, the better of you, you're gonna get got, it's okay. Yeah. You got, you know, respect, respect the game, or respect the hustle. But
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, other times it's like you, you probably could have gotten there a little bit faster or you could have. Put yourself in a position where you would've attempted a safe because you were under more control. Well, if you don't train these things, um, what, why would you expect to get better at them? And the one direction that people tend to have a hard time resetting after having gone there is backwards, side to side is easy. Mm-hmm. Forward stopping is pretty easy. It's when you have to go backwards and then set from there. Uh, it's where a lot of the guys seem to have issues, and we usually focus a little bit more on the retreating side of things.
Speaker:Yeah. So when you're, you're talking about this role of like deceleration, right? So we've repositioned, we've accelerated, now we're trying to decelerate and get back into position. Um, how are you approaching this with keepers?'cause obviously we're, we're going on some kind of a retreating pattern or even a lateral pattern, but I'm just curious like what strategies you're using to actually improve this skillset.
Speaker 2:So with, with deceleration training, um, how I usually approach it is a little bit different than some of the typical progressions that you'll see in deceleration work, for example, um, a short to long approach, so I think it's Derek Hanson or Damien Harper, where you'll start with, um, short distance accelerations followed by a, like a, almost a one-to-one ratio when it comes to the decel. So, mm-hmm you'll accelerate 10 yards and then you'll have 10 yards to decelerate. And then what you'll do is you'll either increase the distance that you are accelerating and try to keep the deceleration zone the same, or you're gonna try and reduce the deceleration zone, keeping the acceleration zone the same, forcing you to break harder. The thing with keepers is they rarely get to high enough speeds or that's gonna be extremely important. The velocities prior to deceleration aren't that high. Now we do try to build capacity in case they ever find themselves in a situation where you have to make a hard 90 degree cut or you have to make a hard 180. So we wanna make sure that they're prepared for, um, the unexpected so that they don't get hurt, um, by doing things that they could have trained for and prevented to some degree. But for our deceleration work, a lot of it is very quick. Um, change of directions, a lot of multiple repositioning movements in a very small amount of space. So I work less the, uh, short to long approach and more the more frequent decelerations in this small box or window that I'm working with. So, a good example, e extremely simple. Uh, just a continuous shuffle, but three yards apart. The distances covered aren't very large, but the amount of change of directions are high. So we will prioritize more frequent change of directions rather than. Change of direction is done with higher forces involved due to the distances that you cover. Another thing that's really important that we do a lot of is a lot of lead taps, med ball, fake throw stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker 2:the trunk position is huge. And you see this all the time. Guys will get caught. They're plant angles are phenomenal, but the torso, they've got a shoulder sway, they've got a shoulder dump. The trunk or anything above the belly button is not in a position to maximize the phenomenal plant angle that they took, and therefore, they're no longer able to make use of that plant angle to change directions effectively. And a lot of these saves when it comes to change directions. They don't have very many steps left that they can take, uh, moving in that newly intended direction. It's more plant and reach. So if I plant with my right foot and the ball got kicked to my left, I don't have time to take a step to my left. I have to reach well, if my torso's still moving or drifting to the right, my reach just got shorter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well
Speaker 2:now you're at a position, but that wasn't necessarily a lower body issue, that was more of a trunk issue. So we do a lot of those med ball, fake throw, uh, exercises, overhead out front front of the chest, um, adding in a little bit of plow work just to increase the momentum, um, without focusing too much on the technical side of things, like from a shuffle standpoint. Yeah. But a lot of med ball work, a lot of trunk, um, rotation stuff that's more reflexive, and then just a lot more frequent short distance change of directions combining different movement patterns together.
Speaker:Yeah, I know you're still learning the position. So, you know, for an average athlete, let's say, they, they start to develop these skills, right? Where increasing our movement, uh, capabilities and efficiency, we're working on our power development. We're changing quickly, we're getting repositioned. Like from a technical, tactical standpoint, what opportunities does improving the athleticism for a keeper open? Because I would imagine if, I mean, we talked about this already. If you're slow, like. The affordances, the options that you have are going to be much less, but I'm, I don't know enough about the position. Um, so like what, like what, why would a average athleticism keeper want to get this skillset? So
Speaker 2:the first thing is, we preach this to our guys all the time, and it's probably the crux of our content is I'd rather you have the option to do more, even if you don't do as much as, uh, what you have available to you. Gotcha. So, I don't want the issue that keepers run into be that I didn't have this skill in my, in my skillset, or as part of my, mm-hmm. In my skill toolbox. So our, our goal is quite simple. I can summarize it in, in very few words, bigger toolbox, more efficient at using those tools. The rest is taken care of by the coaches and the players. Right. Okay. So I want you to have the ability number. I want you to have the options available to you to use X, Y, and Z skill. And I want you to be proficient and efficient when it comes to using these skills on the pitch. Yeah. When it comes time to implement them and when you should or shouldn't use this skill. That's really not where, where most of my expertise lie. That's what I'm trying to learn is where do they fit into scenarios and game-like context. But I don't want your, the reason for you conceding a goal to be because you didn't know how to hit turn or because you didn't know how to link a lateral run into a lateral shuffle. Like, no, not happening. So for us, it's just, if you have those options available to you, you give yourself more of an opportunity to make saves that you wouldn't have been able to make if you didn't have those skillsets in your toolbox. So give'em a chance essentially. And the second thing is, all these technical actions require you to use your body. If you don't feel comfortable using your body and manipulating it in different ways in space, then the technique really doesn't matter. It's, it's like trying to soup up a car with the tires, um, you know, are deflated. Yeah. It just doesn't work. Like remember that the driver is only as effective as the car that he's driving. He can be the most, I know well-versed and most elite driver in the world, but if he's driving the wrong car in the wrong race, he's gonna look like a chump.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So we, we need to remember that the technique, um, needs to appreciate how the physicality. Promote you more opportunity to use different techniques. And I see this all the time. A lot of keepers will be told that you need to do X, y, and Z technique. And they're unable to. And they're just constantly being forced to, to take on the strategy that they're unable to do. And usually the first thought is, oh, they're not trying hard enough. They're not listening. They don't understand what I'm saying. And it's, they never really consider that. Maybe they're just not physically able to for X, y, and Z reason. And that's something that requires a physiological intervention, not adding more technical jargon or complexity to the situation. It's like, let's back up here. How come my guy can't drop? Maybe.'cause he can't unweight. Why can't he unweight?'cause he have, he's heavily compressed.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Well, the intervention's gonna look a little different, right? So this is where just appreciating how physiology and your physical abilities will impact the techniques that you either. Can perform, perform or the bandwidth of technical improvement that you can make. So I, I think it's highly relevant.
Speaker:No, I love that. And I think, I think you and I are very aligned in this because I had this conversation with a lot of athletes. You know, I, they'll, parents will reach out, they'll be like, can you, can you teach, you know, my son to run routes? I'm like, look, I, I don't teach any of the skills specific stuff. My job is to give coaches better play to work with so that they can play these athletes, um, in the scheme that they wanna play, in the positions they want to play, and the, you know, whatever the style of play that they're going to do. If you're on a basketball team and you guys are gonna full court press, I want this athlete to be prepared to handle the demands of that. And likewise, I love the analogy about the tools, right? Like I have, uh, certain tools, I don't know, I barely know which end of the hammer to hold, but I have certain, certain tools that, um, are incredible time savers that I rarely, rarely use. But if I get in a situation. Where I don't have that tool. The consequence of not having it is immense frustration and really an inability to do the job. And so I like this this frame of like, Hey, we're gonna give our athletes the capacity to do what they need to do and just take this off the table. Because I think for most athletes, like these things are trainable. They're very, um, you, you can take all the physical limitations off the table for the most part. Like some, some people are just elite and you know, it's hard to get there. But, you know, I think it's easier to improve this stuff than it is, you know, the technical, tactical elements of the game, which take years and exposure and game specific context that is, is hard to recreate sometimes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And uh, again, it's, it's also context specific.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Over these past couple years, having conversations with coaches, especially the definitions that they'll give for certain technical actions and the reason for when you would use this technique versus another is, has never lined up. And it's one of the areas that I'm pushing back on a little bit more is like, guys, you need to be a little bit more universal with the terminology.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because
Speaker 2:it's confusing, it's confusing to people from the outside who are trying to understand the position more. Right. Um, I'm not trying to, well I am kind of trying to ruffle feathers, but in a respectful way. Uh, but it's also confusing to the athletes.'cause you know, sometimes athletes will, will have a coach here and they'll have a substitute coach for whatever reason, and then they're using the same word, but they're meaning the different things. It's like, well, at the end of the day, the people that we're trying to help the most are the ones that are getting most confused. And we wonder why. They're just like, I don't know what to do, I freeze. It's like, yeah,'cause you're being told 13 different things when it should be a lot simpler than that. And this is, I don't know who said this, but something about, you know, to try and hammer down technical, um, models. When an athlete needs to develop more physically, it's like you're, you're really putting the cart before the horse. Your technique is going to look different once your physical capacities change. Yeah. So, you know, I, I think you made a post recently where it's like, stop worrying so much about your thigh separation on your sprints. Like just to sprint, get a little bit stronger and do all these things that you need to do. And your thigh separation will probably take care of itself once you get to a point where those physical capacities are gonna be topped off. Then look into some of the nuances of the, say the technical element of sprinting. And now we're trying to get a little bit more of the juice from that orange that you had squeezed pretty much to its end prior with the physical training. Same thing with keepers. If we can get them physically. Able to do certain things is you hand'em off to the coaches saying, here, now you've got a lot more that you can do with this keeper. You, you know, you, you went from like a pocket knife to a switch. Army knife, Swiss army knife. Yeah. You got more options. Have fun. Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yeah. There's, um, I, man, we can make a whole nother podcast about this, but I do, I'm so in agreement with you on this because I do feel that the technical, uh, output that an athlete has is often predicated on their physical capacities. And to your point, when they change and when we enhance them, they are going to be modified because the new constraint may not be the physical capabilities of this athlete. Having said that, we still work on technique stuff a lot, but with a lot less maybe wording and queuing than I, than I used to. Like it's gotten significantly simpler. And I think it's been much too much to the benefit of my athletes because now they're less confused.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's something I've tried to do a little bit less of is always having an answer for something. Oh dude, it's, you wanna jump in.'cause you're like, oh, here, here's the way. We can make this a little bit more effective. Or you can get a little bit more bang for your buck, but at the end of the day, they gotta figure this stuff out. And if you're, you know, an elite athlete, that's usually what's one of the things that separates them is that they problem solve like nobody's business. They know how to figure it out. It may not look pretty, but at the end of the day, if the ball didn't go the back of the net, I ain't screaming at you. You did what you had to do.
Speaker:Yeah. The, the goal is the, the goal is to keep the goal. The goal, yeah. And I think sometimes we get away from that. Okay. So keepers, like, when it comes to evaluating these guys and looking at their current capabilities versus what you've already identified as some of the areas of deficits, how are you assessing movement? And specifically, I'm curious how you do this remotely, because I know you don't work with a lot of guys, like in person to do this stuff. So kind of just gimme a, a quick breakdown. So for,
Speaker 2:for the online and in-person stuff, it's, it's quite similar. Um, the biggest difference is obviously the tech that we have available to us. Yeah. So in person, you know, thankfully, uh, we're pretty fortunate to have some chi jump mats. Uh, we've got speed timers or speed gates. Uh, so we can test some of those more traditional things like, um, five, ten five or, um, I'll become more f of the ten five. So sprint 10. And then run back five. Yep. Uh, so we have the timing gates necessary for that. Uh, we'll do typical, you know, the eccentric utilization ratio test where it's K squat jump versus, uh, counter moment jump. And then depending on what I see with that is, I may also include some form of a depth jump. But if I, if I notice that there's clearly a difference between their CMJ and their, their squad jump, I'm not gonna bother.'cause I, I've already got enough information.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Uh, when it comes to strength testing, uh, depending on the level of the athlete, um, I, I love calisthenic type movements. I, I personally do them and I, I feel like there's a lot more there than maybe we have realized, uh, as far as the development side and, and what it actually brings to the table. So I look at gymnasts and I'm like, there's, why would I need to do all of this additional bodybuilding work when I'm looking at them? I'm like, you guys are shredded, your shoulders are functional and you can probably manage your own when it comes to upper body strength. I want useful strength. So we'll use things. Um, like I, I, I've kind of gotten into this a little bit myself. I haven't programmed it as much'cause I still need to kind of get you good at it to be able to coach it. But, uh, handstand variations, um, things that for me really do depict athleticism. I'd rather keep or be able to do five handstand pushups, um, cur, you know, as, as optimally as possible. If they have the range, then be able to body, uh, bench press their body weight for X amount of reps. That's, that's not as important to me. So. When it comes to the testing, those specifically for those who are at a distance, thankfully there's a lot of tech out there that we can use that doesn't actually require physical technology. So, uh, things like metric VBT, which I think is now metric, so some velocity stuff. So depending on the athletes, uh, training ages, we'll use that to profile just to see where they're at with some of the basic lifts. Uh, for those who are less comfortable or experienced when it comes to those lifts, is I'll use things like pistol squats, uh, as a way to determine, you know, lower body strength, but also the range of motion that they need to get down into those deeper ranges.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:But for the movement stuff, we'll use more of the visual assessment rather than the metrics that we'll get if we were to use, say, a time of gate. So I'll still use that ten five change direction test. But instead of just looking for the metric, I'm really looking into the, uh, the visual side. So how did they change directions? Mm-hmm. What was the. Deceleration process. Like did they take five, six steps, um, to slow down or were they able to, to decelerate in one to two for jumping? It's pretty much the same thing. You got things like my JUMP app or my jump lab, whatever it's called now, we'll use that to still assess, okay, squat, jump to CMJ differences, and depending on that. We'll use things like, uh, it's a loaded jump profile that I'm actually starting to prefer over those max strength tests. And we'll use the Bos Bosco index. So essentially trying to determine based on squat, jump height, kinda roman jump height is, are they eccentrically lacking or are they eccentrically lacking? Okay, cool. Now we'll go do a loaded jump test. Do they need more ballistic strength versus eccentric strength, or, sorry, uh, I guess max strength, slow strength, whatever people are using now as far as terms go, and then just kind of go from there and we'll just reassess after every month or, or maybe a little longer, especially if we're seeing progress. We don't necessarily have to keep profiling every time if the guys are feeling good. Right. So, we'll, we'll kind of keep that in mind. But a lot of it's just the standard jump testing, uh, with a lot of the technology that we have at our fingertips, and it's more visual assessment, so still doing the movement stuff, but taking, taking into account the, the visible. Cues that I'm seeing or the visible, visible restrictions that may be present in the way that they change directions and maybe attacking it from more of a technical standpoint. Yeah. Than saying, you know, you change directions slow. It's more like, let's, let's have you change directions more effectively and hopefully that will result in you not being as slow.
Speaker:Yeah, I love that. And I think for anybody like out there when you're building your assessment profile can be tempting to just continue to include things in the assessment. Right? There's so many great options, but what it sounds like to me, and what I think you're doing really well is you're hitting a variety of contact times and speeds and loads and velocities. And so kind of goes back to what, uh, Matt Jordan talks about is this envelope of function right across the force velocity curve. You know, what kind of tests can we use in these three or four different zones, and what does this really tell us about the athlete? So that's a, I mean, the way that you approach this very pragmatic. It's very simple, and I think it gives you some, some direction of how to actually use that to inform training, because I've been guilty in the past of having a number of things that did not impact my decision making process. They were just in the assessment for, I don't know, somebody else told me to use it or I just thought I needed it. Yeah, no, try to make it simple. Right? Stupid, simple. Even for the coaches. Oh man, it's so tough. Okay, man. Um, we've been going for a while here, so I just wanna hit you with some, like extra innings here. Some, some outro questions. So, um, what is, what is one training hill that you would die on Training Hill?
Speaker 2:Uh, speed before strength. I know I, I'm a meathead, uh, I like lifting weights, but I rather do fast. Thanks. Even if my goal wasn't to get fast, it's just something about being explosive that is, is a non-negotiable. And again, I, I feel like it carries over to strength more than the opposite. So if someone were to ask me if you could only do strength training versus speed training for the rest of this athlete's career,
Speaker:I'm on speed all day. Absolutely. And though, yeah, man, I'm getting old. I'm like turning 40 this year, but the closer I get to it, I'm like, you know, like I could pretty much be strong at any age, but being fast and explosive is clearly tied to youth. Yeah. So I should probably pay a little bit more attention to that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2:definitely. And plus that most people, it's like, Hey, how much can you bench it? How fast can you run? That's something I feel like, uh, insert or asserts through dominance a little bit more effectively.
Speaker:Faster than, yeah. So, yeah, kid asked me to flex. I'm gonna drop my pants and hit a quad shot instead. Yeah,
Speaker 2:it's all good. You can have prettier quads than me, but I'm fast than you. Who cares?
Speaker:All right. O most overrated method exercise or machine for goalkeepers. Uh, I would say the most
Speaker 2:overrated coaching cue is play on your toes.
Speaker 3:Mm.
Speaker 2:I've, I think I've made more posts about that than anything else. And it's just this, this idea that somehow that's gonna make you, uh, faster when reaction time doesn't necessarily involve that. It's more decision making, but the negatives do not outweigh the positives when it comes to playing your toast. Like you're losing essentially all the elasticity that you get from the arch and then the Achilles and all that stuff when you're just constantly on your toes and you're stiff the entire time. Plus, you're always feeling like you're falling forward.
Speaker:Yep. It's not a resting success. Athletes, taller athletes all the time. Toes are heavy, but heels are down. Yep. Oh, so, all right. Um, most important thing for keepers, no one is talking about play on your toes.
Speaker 2:Uh, most more thing is you don't have to feel so, or you don't have to feel like you worked hard to have done good work.
Speaker 4:Hmm.
Speaker 2:It's this idea, this whole effort over outputs thing. It's, it's, it's just this prevailing theme in the goalkeeper world that it, it's like if you don't walk away from your session feeling like you got hit by a few trucks, that you didn't work hard enough. It's like hard work is really relevant to the task. You can work really hard but not bust a sweat. It's okay. And if you understood the demands of your position, you'd realize that maybe you're emphasizing something that's not really gonna carry over as well to the things that you need to be good at, then you think so. Nah, you don't have to necessarily, high effort again, does not equate to
Speaker:high outputs. I know it's so crazy. Parents,'cause we work, I work with a lot of youth athletes. They're so seduced by like, who can out grind? Who, who is training their kids the hardest, who's got the puke buckets out? Who's doing all this stuff? And I just kind of, I don't know, I just like wanna like gouge my eyeballs out sometimes. Like, stab'em with a pencil. I'm like, God. Like what is it gonna take for you guys? Like, why, why is this the standard? You know? Yeah. This like, when do they puke in a game? You know, what do we, am I gonna bring a boxer in here and just jack'em in the face 20 times?'cause it's sport specific and it's like hard. Like it's just, it's, I feel like I'm taking, I, man, I feel like I'm literally taking crazy pills sometimes. No, I feel you man. It's like,
Speaker 2:after each save, do you feel like you wanna vomit? And if you did, maybe'cause you landed on your stomach. So it's like that's, there's, there's more that separates the two than what keeps them together.
Speaker:Yeah, this is the only time I've seen a keeper puke is when it got drilled between the legs.
Speaker 2:There you go. So we can practice that in the gym if you want.
Speaker:Oh, I don't think so. Uh, all right. Coaching habit, saying or approach that really grinds your gears apart from playing on your toes. Um, apart,
Speaker 3:if you got an, if you got a second one, I'll take it. Uh, I wouldn't say it's a saying, but it's this idea that
Speaker 2:there's just one size fits all technical approach.
Speaker 3:Hmm.
Speaker 2:That's good. You've got different structures, you've got different preferences, you've got different styles. I mean, for Carlisle, like they say in boxing styles make for good fights. Well, yeah. Different styles of goalkeeping make for interesting goalkeeping and some players just do better playing a certain way than trying to force'em to play like the guy next to them. And that's the thing is you're gonna have individualization from both a physical standpoint, but also a technical standpoint. You know what they do really well, let's, let's try and hammer that down and slowly bring up their weak points. But. What allowed them to get as far as they did was probably what they were really good at.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So
Speaker 2:let's not try and break that because it's essentially what allowed them to get that far. But if people are dead set on having all of their keepers look and move the same way, then you're, you're really missing out on again, what each person brings to the table and what allowed them to get that far to begin with. Because I'm pretty sure if you watch film, no two keepers are alike. Yeah. They may be in similar situations, but the way they handle'em may be a little bit different and that's fine. Again, if, as long as that ball isn't go the back of the net in a situation that you could have controlled or that you, you were able to influence a little bit more, that's
Speaker 3:what you're being paid for. No doubt. All right. On that note, um,'cause I like to look at some
Speaker:film too. What pick one or two, uh, elite goalkeepers that people should watch, especially from a movement standpoint. David Raya Arsenal.
Speaker 2:Uh. He is not your, I guess your, your standard height when it comes to goalkeepers. I'm pretty sure he is six foot to six foot one. Okay. That's quite short for a keeper or average? Yeah. Short. I was gonna say, say average shorter and Yeah. But the guy covers the goal, like he's six foot six. It's insane. And his ability to get back into the play, not necessarily after making a mistake.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:But, you know, things are happening at a really rapid pace. Again, you have to be able to maneuver on different bodies. So sometimes the reactions are a little bit delayed because of what's happening in front of you. He can just get back to where he needs to be so effectively. And another thing that's even more interesting is some of his movements, some of the saves that I've, I've watched him make from a movement standpoint are just butt ugly. Like just all the things that we're teaching our guys not to do, but the man still makes the safe like that. I gotta take my hat off to you. It's like this is where you have the people that no matter what you do, they're just gonna be. They're just
Speaker 4:gonna be.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. So you can just only hope that your, your training will help them make, help make them like 0.5% better. But yeah, they were, they were elite before you even came around. So, David Raya, um, I used to be a big Aaron Ramsdale guy. Uh, he's kind of, I don't wanna say fall off the wagon, but there's been a lot of movement. He's been injured, so it's kind of changed his approach. I always liked how he would, his movement, he was like, the definition for me of an elastic keeper. Um, so some guys will term them as kangaroos, but ramsdale for me is like the epitome of a kangaroo, um, alongside, um, David dea. But if I were to say someone else to study Allison Becker, okay. I think is, he's a very complete keeper and he does those one v one situations probably better than anybody else from what I've seen. And that's one of the most difficult situations that keepers will find themselves in, apart from penalty kicks. It's like knowing when to act. Versus just responding to what everybody else is doing. Sometimes you've got your teammates there who can help prevent goals, but when it's one v one, it's just like, uh, manano. It's like, okay, who, who's, who's taking over here? Who's get who's getting caught? Yeah. And yeah, I think what he does there is, is just extremely impressive and everything else that he does as well, um, makes him to be someone that you should be studying on a regular.
Speaker:Okay. I'm Check it out, man. Sure. I always, I always like seeing a, a good save. Good movement. Chris, man, you've been the realist. Uh, appreciate your time. I'm glad we could do this, so, sure. For people who wanna find out more, uh, work with you, more about your work or just connect with you, what's the best place
Speaker 2:Instagram, man, we try to keep it simple. Don't ask me for a TikTok, it ain't gonna happen. I've got no interest. Instagram work just fine. So that's where we post most of our content. I, I, I won't lie, I've been a little bit, uh, lazy on the, the content stuff, but we're pretty active on our stories, uh, trying to, to work on getting someone to do that for us, it's, uh, it's gotten pretty, pretty busy, which is a good thing. So we're not complaining, but wanna make sure our people are still being fed. And apart from that email, um, coach Chris or info@coachchrisathletics.com, uh, that's usually where a lot of the conversations will start, apart from Instagram. But, uh, ig and email are usually the best places to find us. And we got some products out there. Uh, we've got training team that we also have for those who wanna train year round and who want to improve all the things that we talked about in this, in this call. Mm-hmm. And then obviously if you wanna work with me one-on-one, that's something that we can talk, uh, about on over email.
Speaker:Alright dude, well thanks. I'm gonna have you repurpose your content on TikTok. I think I can get you on that platform. Hey, you wanna take, you wanna take lead? I, nah man, I don't wanna do that. But I think you would crush it there. Like you've already got the content, you know, just literally just, it's all, it's all the, the other stuff like the TikTok world is just, I don't want to be a part of that. I,
Speaker 2:bro, bro, post I'm only on Instagram longer than I
Speaker:have to be. Mm. Post and ghost. Post and ghost.
Speaker 2:That's the part. It's hard. I can't do that on Instagram. I think tiktoks gonna be even harder to do that.
Speaker:I, I don't know, maybe it's my age, like TikTok, I'm like, I'm in and I'm out. Okay. I don't even post that much on there, but like, it, it doesn't do it for me anyway. I take a page from
Speaker 2:your book, man.
Speaker:Alright man. Well, I appreciate you. I'm gonna let you go. Thank you so much. And um, yeah, till
Speaker 3:next time, appreciate you coach. It was an honor being here, man.