Goalkeeping specific nutritional information and products. Goalkeepers are a special breed and even though part of the team they are highly individual in terms of their psychology and physiology.A conditioning programme for goalkeepers needs to consider the demands of the game; everything they do that has a bearing on the match is explosive in nature.

With this in mind we need to realise that goalkeepers should not blindly follow the programmes set for the outfield players who may cover 13km during a game at sub-maximal intensities.

Long slow runs and team circuits are not good enough to prepare goalkeepers to be powerful and explosive. We need to spend a long period preparing the body to train, i.e. building up the work capacity. This phase considers the stability and mobility of movements, ensuring that the players have strong foundations in the core areas, hips, shoulders, glutes and mid-section.
Upon this foundation we need to build an efficient movement base as the underlying philosophy is to “train movements not muscles”, in essence this means we don’t waste time doing 3 sets of 10 reps for biceps when the time could be devoted to increasing the range of movement and stability in a single leg squat.

The development of a goalkeeping specific conditioning programme needs to carefully consider the long term process and may take several years before a player undertakes truly explosive specific loaded movement patterns, the key to success is patience , patience, patience !