the different types of goalkeeper training

It's unfortunate that many believe goalkeeper training simply revolves around a goalkeeper receiving shots or even a series of predictable shots. This can help, but it's not going to prepare you for actually playing the game each week.

Many team sessions involve a single goalkeeper in the goal as a team completes a shooting drill involving repetitive shots with little rest for the goalkeeper and zero defenders. One could wonder if this is even really helping the attacker? They're learning to shoot with no pressure, and no distraction towards a goal with a tired and usually out of position goalkeeper. Yes I can accept that this style of drill is common and a big part of team training that isn't going anywhere. That's fine. However, it isn't goalkeeper training. It's teaching the goalkeeper to survive. It isn't building your goalkeepers confidence and they don't have an opportunity to play each shot as they would in a game. Many young keepers will complain that during this style of drill they're still on the ground when the next one comes in, most learn to just not go for the hard ones for fear of not being ready for the next one, inevitably learning to not go for a selection of shots. If planning these sessions and wanting to have the goalkeeper get something out of it, be sure to start from the goalkeepers perspective and build from there.

But this is about goalkeeper specific training, so lets switch our attention back there.

While what's happening at team sessions can be beneficial it isn't what's going to develop a goalkeeper. Realistically young keepers need to be attending goalkeeper specific sessions. There's many foundational pieces that go into goalkeeping and these should be broken down and practiced in a controlled environment to create confidence and comfort with them. To help with this predictable service is an important step. This allows the goalkeeper to prepare to use the technique, recognize the type of service and then execute the skill. The brain is given an opportunity to prepare and “cheat” a little by moving early knowing what to expect. There's a need for this step in development of the goalkeeper's toolkit or in the activation portion of an advanced session.

Many youth sessions involve a goalkeeper moving around the goal at speed making multiple saves. Most of these saves a predetermined. Move to near post get low dive to right, move to far post get mid dive left, move to middle get high dive right. Repeat. In addition, if things didn't go perfect (service or missed save) and look clean, the whole sequence would begin again from the start taking away the opportunity to learn how to move on quickly in the moment. A few years ago after watching many students grow along this path I started to notice that while they could technically make a save when they knew where it was going, they struggled on shots that could go anywhere. They would FREEZE with indecision. The technical aspects didn't transfer over into the game.

The decision is the hardest part and the final piece. Anybody can make saves look great when they know where it's going. But movement into an angle balanced and able to get set reading shooting ques and reacting to what comes is what a goalkeeper truly sees in a game. Your training should make you think, not just physically work. Once you have the foundational pieces you should see scenarios that represent the game you play. Layer on to this the ability to bounce back after getting the decision wrong and you're truly growing as a goalkeeper. As soon as I added these elements into sessions I saw an explosion in the goalkeepers ability to make decisions and react to the unknown with confidence.

Are you surviving, training or playing in your sessions?