At Home Youth Diving for Goalkeepers

This is the second at home training session recorded with a youth goalkeeper. Last time we focused on basic warm up and handling drills. In this session the focus is on introducing diving to the youth keeper, making sure they control their body and the ball. You can follow along with these soccer goalie exercises with minimal equipment and a training partner. Parents, this is a great way to keep your goalkeeper engaged during the lock down. 

After a good warm up, we move onto diving technique, breaking the art down into easily understood sections. With youth goalkeepers, it is important that they learn the diving technique is small steps, so that they control their body and the ball. We do not want a young soccer player slamming their body into the ground over and over as it will lead to injury. By breaking the technique down, it gives the goalkeeper time to absorb the information and produce a quality save. This will take time and lots of repetition as you can see in the video.

We like to start with the goalkeeper on their knees with a stationary ball, learning how to step in the direction of the shot and slowly lower their body to the ball in a controlled manner. This reduces the chances of injury and ensures the goalie learns the correct technique. Once comfortable you can progress to a soccer ball service with either the feet or hands. Now the keeper is developing timing of the shot and learning when to lower their body. We encourage the keeper to think about moving their body east to west rather than falling in a north to south manner. Progress to serves off the ground (hip) height to develop further timing and a controlled landing. 

The second phase of the session moves the goalkeeper to their feet and continuing with the same technique. We work on the keeper taking a large step in the direction of the stationary ball and bending their knee to lower the body toward the ball. Again, once comfortbale the ball can then be served to the working goalkeeper either with the feet or hands. The final progression would be to increase the speed and height of the service to further challenge the goalkeeper. 

Finally you can play "goalkeeper wars" with the working goalie to keep them focused and increase competition. Most goalies love to play this game and it is fun at any age. 

This session was conducted by Christian Benjamin of www.keeperstop.com. Contact the goalkeeper experts at Keeperstop on 860.904.7679