Tips for Those Days When You’re Not Feeling It
By Coach Damon
January 28, 2019
When you practice lacrosse every day (or nearly every day) eventually you’ll have a day in between the pipes when you’re just not feeling it.
Didn’t sleep well the night before. Nervous about a big test. Girlfriend/boyfriend dumped you. Huge/painful bruise on your thigh.
Whatever the reason for your funk, throwing on the lacrosse pads and having rubber pellets ripped at you is about the last thing you want to do.
It might not even be a lacrosse practice. Maybe you have a weightlifting session or a team run and you’re just not feeling up for it.
In these situations what do you do you? What are some tips that you get into the gym and or into the lacrosse field?
Let’s go.
Review Your Goals
In the intro to my online goalie camp, one of the first things we cover is a video on setting goals.
Athletes – including lacrosse goalies – who set goals related to their athletic development are more likely to have success.
In your lacrosse career, just like in life, you will encounter setbacks so it’s important to know what we’re working for.
This is your “why”.
Your “why” is something you need to continuously revisit because it provides motivation and helps you fight through setbacks.
If you have no goal – no “why” – then its very easy to give into your feeling of laziness. It’s very easy to feel unmotivated.
But if you wake up each morning and see something like this – you’ll have a stronger desire to attack that day’s training session.
So write that goal down. Put it in a very visible place and revisit it daily.
If you are lacking discipline, stop and ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Remembering your purpose helps to kick discipline back into gear.
In addition to keeping your goals visible, it can be helpful to have motivational quotes where you can see them every day.
That will help you with a little motivation when you’re not feeling up for a training session.
Focus Your Training
For those days you’re simply not feeling it you can try hyper-focusing your training.
If you go into a training session super focused on just one thing sometimes you’ll find you end up doing much better.
Saving the ball, communicating with the D, leading the clear – goalies have a lot to worry about.
But maybe you pick one hyper-focused element of your game – like your lacrosse goalie stance.
For the entire practice – for every shot you face – just make sure you’re in a perfect stance pre-shot. Doesn’t matter if you make the save or not. Perfect stance every time.
That’s just one example and there are tons of small elements lax goalies can pick from to focus on for an entire training session. Here are a few off the top of my head:
Just pick one element of your game and stay focused on that through the training session. Sometimes you’ll find that hyper focus puts you back in a good mood to play.
Set SMALL AND SPECIFIC GOALS for the days you’re not feeling it.
Variety, Variety, Variety
Sometimes monotony can be the motivation killer.
So here’s a simple fix – don’t do the same workout all the time. Mix it up!
There are tons of different lacrosse goalie drills that you can use to plan a solid training session.
These drills will challenge different parts of your body and introduce the variety lacrosse goalies need to thrive.
Making a goalie workout fun and interesting will ensure goalies stick to it in the long-term and will help create fewer days where you’re simply not feeling it.
Stop Eating Poorly
When you eat unhealthy, processed, high-sugar foods, your body doesn’t get the energy it needs.
Sometimes people don’t connect the fact that they feel unmotivated to practice with poor eating habits.
Putting crap into your body makes you feel tired, lazy, unmotivated, and grumpy.
Same goes with hydration. Many don’t connect poor hydration to feeling unmotivated but there’s definitely a connection.
So make sure you eat a balanced diet with whole foods and drink plenty of water.
You’ll be amazed that more often than not you have the inspiration to train or give it 100% during practice.
Watch Some Inspiring Videos
Whenever I feel discouraged about going to practice I found it helped to watch inspiring videos to get me into the right headspace to train.
Watching the elite goalies do their thing just puts in the right mood to step in between the pipes or to hit the gym.
So the next time you’re just not feeling it, open up YouTube on your phone and watch one of my save edit compilations.
For example:
Recruit Help of a Teammate or Coach
There’s nothing wrong with letting someone else know you’re not feeling it that day.
Truth be told – they’ll probably realize something is up based your performance or attitude anyways.
Confide in someone you trust, and ask for their help.
Hey bro – I’m not feeling today. Give me a pep talk. Pump me up.
Everyone is going to have days when they feel off but it’s amazing how the support of a trusted teammate or friend can take you out of that funk.
Conclusion
Becoming an elite lacrosse goalie is a long grind. And on that path to greatness you’ll surely encounter days when you simply are not feeling it.
A bad training session is fine but if they start to stack up you have a serious problem that needs addressing.
For those days where you’re not feeling it try following some of the tips in this post.
- Review your goals
- Hyperfocus your training session
- Add variety
- Stop eating poorly
- Watch inspiring videos
- Recruit the help of a teammate
All thing being equal the first one – focus on your “why” – is by far the most important.
Hopefully you’ve set a goal that you want and simply looking at that goal will inspire you to “embrace the suck” and push through the low motivation days.
Until next time! Coach Damon
How do you get motivated on those days when you’re simply not feeling it? Leave me a comment down below.
I have a question, what can I do when I am the only one practicing?
Like drills you can do by yourself? –> https://laxgoalierat.com/lacrosse-goalie-workout-and-drills-to-do-all-alone/
Yes
Cool – checkout that post. It’s got a bunch!
Hey Coach,
Great stuff, as always!
Used your advice over the years back when my son used to play goalie. At 15 he decided he’d rather score then get scored on, kind of like Blaze Riordon…for 3 years now we’ve been training crossover hockey goalies to become high school age lacrosse goalies with great success. We’ve come to determine the best outcome is to not try to change them. Coach them to their strengths from hockey. The tricky part has been , with all 3 goalies, to get them to react first with their stick head, then their body. Hockey goalies tend to stick their foot out first on low shots, then move their stick.
Last year, our Senior x/over goalie in his 2nd season playing the sport, recorded 258 saves, of which about 1/2 were deflections. He kept us “IN” many games. I’ll take the crowd pleasing spectacle of a deflection save and play on over a goal any day. Of course we’d prefer a save and the possession, but without a town youth league and most of our players first exposure to lacrosse coming in high school, we are most vulnerable in the goalie position…every year.
Thanks Dave! Appreciate it! A save is a save but that’s a lotta damage to the body – hopefully that dude is ok! Good luck in the upcoming season!