3 Things I'm Working On for the Lax Goalie Rat Site | Lax Goalie Rat

3 Things I’m Working On for the Lax Goalie Rat Site

LGR

This week is a quick post to share with you a few things I’m working on for the Lax Goalie Rat site.

I’m really excited for these new projects and I can’t wait to complete them so that I can share with LGR community.

Any of these seem interesting to you? Let me know in the comments.

Online Lacrosse Goalie Camp

Edit: My lacrosse goalie camp is here! Check out that link for all the details on what I think is the best lacrosse goalie training available online!

Parents from all over the US sometimes write me to ask if I’m hosting a camp in their area. While I would love to do it, unfortunately its just not possible for me to make a bunch of trips to host camps.

As an alternative, I’m working on something I think is very interesting – an online lacrosse goalie camp.

It’s an idea I’ve had for years and I’m now working to get it done!

The camp will consist of mostly videos – both on the field instruction and in the classroom knowledge training and mental toughness building. While the written form is great for communicating many aspects of being a dominating goalie, some things are best shown via video.

The camp will feature private forums so goalies can post their results and everyone in the camp can check their progress and root them on. You can also ask me any questions related to the camp in this area.

So far I’ve spent several weekends recording instructional videos with the help of current college players.

I’m working on editing and packaging these up into a complete lacrosse goalie camp. I have about 75% of this camp completed and am targeting to finish by the end of the year.

I’ll be gathering a short list of interested goalies shortly to be the first set campers. So if you’re interested in that, shoot me a quick email ([email protected]).

Stay tuned for more info on the online lacrosse goalie camp likely in January.

Clickable Heat Map Tool

Heat maps are an incredibly valuable method of visualizing and interpreting data.

For those of you who are baseball fans you’ve probably seen hitters heat maps which visualize the batter’s likelihood of success on pitches to different locations.

Baseball Heat Map

For example, as a pitcher you should avoid throwing balls down and inside to this batter. Red zone!

I’d like to create the same thing for lacrosse goalies. With this tool you’ll be able to click to mark both saves and goals and something like this would be the output.

lacrosse heat map

If red represents goals, where should you shoot on this goalie? Where should this goalie work on saves?

The lacrosse goalie heat map helps identify a goalie’s hot and cold zones. While this info is very useful to opposing attackman, it’s also useful to the goalie to understand where we need to spend more time practicing.

In addition to the goalie view, we could also produce a field view. To understand visually where the team and goalie are allowing goals and making saves from different locations on the field.

Visualizing the data in this way often gives insights into the goalie’s game or the team’s defensive game that were not apparent before.

I’ve done a fair amount of researching and asking around and haven’t found any tool capable of creating your own clickable heat map for sports analysis. If anyone knows of something, leave me a comment below.

Otherwise look for this tool to come out from Lax Goalie Rat sometime in the future.

Weekly Posts

Since 2015, with just a handful of exceptions, I’ve published a weekly post to the Lax Goalie Rat blog.

The writing process is something that I didn’t realize I’d enjoy this much.

My passion is lacrosse goalies so digging into the different topics that are important to lacrosse goalies, their coaches and parents has yet to get old – despite being at over 150(!) posts and counting.

Writing the weekly posts has also helped me learn. When a young goalie emails me a question, most often I have the answer ready to go, but sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes I need to spend an hour researching or a few hours out on the lacrosse field trying something before I get the right answer. That part I love.

If you have a lacrosse goalie (or general lacrosse) topic you think I haven’t fully covered on the blog, please let me know.

That said, I may take a break from the weekly posts to focus my extra time on the 2 projects above. I do have a full-time job that isn’t a lacrosse goalie coach so my free time is somewhat limited. But we’ll see how it goes.

Conclusion

Just wanted to type up a quick post letting you know what to expect from this site in the upcoming months and next year.

Here’s what I’m working:

  1. Online Lacrosse Goalie Camp
  2. Clickable Heat Maps
  3. Weekly Blog Posts

The first two items will also be the priority so you might expect the weekly blog post to take a back seat until items 1 and 2 are finished.

Anything else you’d like to see from this site?

Until next time! Coach Damon

Let me know what you think about these things I’m working on. Any of them interest you? 

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P.S. - Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Lax Goalie Rat Academy - The Lax Goalie Rat Academy is a premier membership program that gives you the tools and skillset to level up your goalie game. Technique, drills, mental game, lacrosse IQ and direct coaching from Coach Damon to turn your goalie into a leader and a confident save machine. Join 400+ goalies inside.

2. Lacrosse Goalie Super Mom/Dad - Some call lacrosse goalie the hardest position in sports. That's not true. It's the goalie Mom or Dad. I put together this course specially for the parents who know nothing about lacrosse but still want to help their son or daughter be the best they can be. Learn how to train them but more importantly learn how to support them on this emotional rollercoaster.

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5 thoughts on “3 Things I’m Working On for the Lax Goalie Rat Site

  1. Not to be cocky but after seeing so many coaches and reading as much as i can find i have found that i havent learned anything new in around a year an a half. I have assumed i just need to do what i know i have to and just correct the mistakes i know im making, should i stop trying to find new coahes and find shooters so i can ” coach myself” or should i continue to find new people?

    1. Hi Jack – After awhile it’s a matter of simply putting in the work. Doing the drills, doing the exercises, taking shots. So once you’ve learned the basics, you’re exactly right, stop researching and get out there and put what you learned into practice so it becomes second nature. You can always use video too to analyze things in your technique that might not be apparent when playing. Good luck! D

  2. The heat map would be great as an interactive tool, I use a pre-designed sheet for my stats at present which I fill in for my goalies during games. It’s useful but hard to use while coaching, as app would be the dream. One that I could incorporate all my stats on.

  3. I’ve been working on a homebrew version of a heat map throughout fall ball. It’s an interesting tool and my goalie reviews the data after each game. I track data on paper and then translate to digital, so an app could make it work better. A couple observations I’ve found so far…
    * goal view and field view are important together. giving up a stick side low goal on a fast break is very different than a 15 yard shot.
    * similarly, recording bounce shot (or not) and some trajectory info (low to low, high to low, etc…) is helpful is diagnosing weaknesses / strengths.
    * without video, it’s very difficult to get highly accurate info. +/- is typically 1ft on vertical and horizontal (goal view) and ~ 2 yd and ~ 10 degrees on the radial.

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