Lacrosse Goalie Workout and Drills To Do All Alone
As the lacrosse season gets underway its important to understand that formal lacrosse practice is obviously a critical part of your development as a goalie.
However, spending time practicing on your own will give you an extra edge over your competition and turn you into a standout goalie once you join your teammates.
Alternatively you might find yourself on a team with no goalie coach or assistants and in need of lacrosse goalie drills that you can do by yourself. Ideally you have a coach, a backup goalie, or a player who can help you train but not every goalie has that luxury.
Below is a full lacrosse goalie workout / drills that you can perform all alone.
Lacrosse Goalie Workout and Drills to Perform By Yourself
The key to practicing on your own is to perform drills that focus on endurance, footwork, and hand-eye coordination.
You won’t be able to simulate live shots but by focusing on those elements you will definitely improve your goalie game and be better suited to stop live shots once they come.
For all of the solo drills below make sure to perform at full speed with 100% effort. With nobody watching you, accountability is in your hands!
This workout is setup such that you alternate endurance drills with slower paced skill drills. That way you’re able to get through the entire workout without burning out.
Of course if you need to take breaks to get water go ahead. But remember you’re holding yourself accountable. Push hard.
Agility Ladder – 5-10 minutes – The agility ladder is going to get your heart pumping. It also improves your agility (surprise, surprise) and your footwork.
If you need an agility ladder workout I provide one in my original post on lacrosse goalie drills. The ickey shuffle (any Ickey Woods fans out there?) exercise is perfect for mimicking the save movement a goalie makes.
Doc Drill – 5 minutes – A drill I learned from one of our position’s greats (Brian ‘Doc’ Dougherty) and carries his name. The Doc Drill is a hand-eye coordination drill with an added benefit of improving reaction time.
Throw the ball against the ball. Make the save stepping forward at angle. Repeat and repeat until you’re so close to the wall you mess up. Back up to the starting spot and repeat.
You can do this drill with your goalie stick or with a short stick for added difficulty.
Here is Coach Damon performing the drill.
Jump Rope – 5 x 1-minute sprints – Jumping rope helps goalies shuffle around the crease with the greatest of ease. When you watch pro goalies excel at their craft, their quick-footed movements are due in part to hours of practice with a rope. With jumping rope we’re working our endurance, coordination, footwork and balance.
Walk the Line – 5 minutes or 10 x 15 yard walks – Perfecting the save movement is all about muscle memory. We want this movement to be so ingrained in our body and mind that we don’t even have to think when a 90mph shot is coming our way. We just react.
Walking the line is a drill where you just mimic saves. Be sure to visualize the shots coming at you and make the saves with perfect form.
You can also walk the line with a heavy bar to increase difficulty.
Magic Square – 5 x 1 minute rounds – To setup this drill, we’ll place our goalie stick perpendicular to a line on the field as pictured above. This creates 4 quadrants.
Different exercises you can do in the magic square:
- Two Feet Over and Back
- Save as above with 1 foot (left then right)
- Two Feet Quad 1 to Quad 2 to Quad 3 to Quad 4, back to Quad 1
- Same as above with 1 foot (left than right)
- Two Feet Side to Side
- Same as above with 1 foot
This jumping exercise will again get the heart pumping and work on a goalie’s quickness.
Hand Eye Drills on the Wall – 5 x 1 minute rounds – This is a great drill which only requires a wall and a ball.
Here is Lax Goalie Rat sponsored athlete Sophia Lerose demoing the drill set:
40 Yard Dash – 5 dashes (approx. 10 min.) – Sprinting builds muscle and increases a goalie’s explosion to the ball. Ease into it – we’re not trying to break Hussein Bolt’s record. 75%-85% intensity is enough to give you a workout while still allowing your muscles and nervous system time to recover.
Reaction Ball – 5 minutes – Grab a reaction ball off of Amazon (they’re cheap). Start with drops at knee level, then hip level, then chest level. Explode towards the ball like you’re making a save and grab it with your top hand.
You can also perform reaction ball drills against a wall.
Wall Ball – 10 minutes – Finally hit the wall. Goalies need to have the best stick skills on the team. Preferably use a shortie but the goalie stick will also suffice. Check this post if you need a wall ball routine for goalies.
Playing wall ball will improve hand-eye coordination and improve your stick skills. Both necessary elements for making saves, controlling rebounds, and dodging outside the crease.
A tip I learned from PLL goalie Drake Porter is to load up a playlist of songs and then do a variation of wall ball for each song. Like this:
Add or more drills and/or reps from the drills listed below depending on your skill and conditioning level.
I put a goalie through this workout recently and it took a little over an hour. Your time will vary depending on the amount of rest time you take in between sets and in between drills.
I’ve discussed each of the drills described above in previous posts. If you’re looking for even more lacrosse goalie drills be sure to checkout some of these posts:
Conclusion
So there you have a good lacrosse goalie workout and set of drills that you can do by yourself.
There are plenty of drills and exercises that benefit goalies that can be performed all alone. What I’ve provided above is not a full list of goalies drills that can be performed on your lonesome, just an example of a solo workout.
If you don’t have a shooter that you can work with, you still have plenty of options to improve your goalie game.
Whether through conditioning, agility, stick work, save technique – all of these elements can be enhanced in a solo workout.
Being all alone is no longer an excuse for not putting in work to improve your goalie game!
Until next time! Coach Damon
Anything I missed? What types of drills or exercises do you do to improve your goalie game when you’re all alone? Let me know about it down below in the comments.
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I played in college in the early 90’s so we didn’t really have goalie coaches it was obviously much different. What helped me was I was also an ice hockey goalie at a very high level. My son is very good for his age (10) but he is looking to do more to better his game I see I can do some of these indoors the weather here sometimes prevents us from going out doors what else can we do indoors. By the way you have a great site
Awesome! Thanks Kevin. Appreciate that. I played early 2000’s, same deal. Not much goalie coaching. Good luck w/ your son!
Hi Coach Damon! I started lacrosse and goalie about two years ago for my college club team. I’ve been trying to fine tune my skills and your articles have been really fantastic for helping me do that, so thank you! We’ve never had a goalie coach, so when I started out I would constantly go to the racquetball court at my school gym to play wall ball simply because I didn’t know what else to do. I found that doing wall ball with a racquetball instead of a regular lacrosse ball was super useful in getting more speed from the ball and since it’s lighter, also forced me to really develop my cradling. (The Doc drill works really well with this). On another note, I was wondering if you have any tips for dealing with shooters who come up close to the crease? I never know whether to meet them at the top of the crease or to stay back on the arc. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hey Sophia! Thanks and you’re welcome! Glad my site was able to help you learn the goalie position.
Regarding shots on the crease, you’re really in no man’s (women’s) land there. Offense should be scoring 95% there. The goal is just too big.
That said a stuff in that situation can really change the momentum of a game.
Whether or not to come out is situational I believe. If the attacker has tons of room and you come out, they’ll just shoot around you. In that case I think you stay back and read em and beat em to the spot they’re trying to shoot.
If the attacker is being harrassed by defender and is limited in shot options, there is where I would come out. Obviously when we come out we’re making the goal smaller and the save easier, and since our defender is taking away their option to throw a fake or step around us we’re in a better spot.
Good luck!
Hi coach, I have been playing goalie for as long as I can remember, and these drills work great.
Thanks Will! Appreciate that! Keep up the good work!
Hi coach, I have been a lacrosse goalie for 3 years now and am starting to get very serious about the sport. For the agility ladder what different exercises should I do and how long for each. Thanks
Hey Kayla! That’s awesome! You can find some good ladder workouts on YouTube. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE9K9w6rOmM