How To Be A Hockey Goalie

Hi, there. My name is Tom Garber and I'm the East London Men's First Team goalkeeper and I'm just going to give you a quick run through of the basics of goalkeeping, and we'll take a look at some of my kit. Alright, the first bit of kit that you'll notice is the kickers.

They go on durestoral boots and generally been the only player on the pitch that is allowed to kick the ball. You can use these to propel the ball away from the goal, makes saves and generally get them in the way shots. They're made of quite hard density foam which makes them quite bouncy so when the balls hits them at speed, they do ping off quite quickly, it makes it easier to deflect the ball away from the goal.

The next major bit of kick, the leg guards, they provide quite a nice bit savings surface. A lot of shots that you get in hockey come in around sort of foot and knee high, so this is what one of the major kits that you get to use when you're stopping shots. Like the kickers, they are made out of high-density foam.

They're a little bit less bouncy than the kickers, so it gives you bit more control over the balls deflecting off. The next bit of kit to protect your thighs and the important parts, so you've got your shorts and your abdo-guard, and generally, you don't really want to be making too many saves with your thighs or that region. But they are just there for your protection, so you know generally, they're just heavily padded and keep things nice and safe so you don't end up with too many bruises.

Next in this kit is the chest guard. Again, you don't want to be taking too many shots to the chest because you've really not got too much control over where the ball goes if it hits you in the chest. Generally again, this is just there to give solid piece of protection because you can get pretty badly hurt if you get hit.

As a goal keeper, you've got two different types of hand guards. You got a blocker guard on your left hand, if you're right handed that is, and that's used for making saves up above where you can make them with your legs basically, the lifted shots anything up in the top corners. And the other hand is your right hand, that's your stick hand.

We'll go on to the stick in a minute. In, generally, it's just another bit of high density foam, it gives stopping surface so it gives you a bit more to save the ball with, than just having the stick. And again, it's for high shots, so generally if you're going to make it, say if you're on the right-hand side and can't get your left blocker mitt to, that's the better technique and bringing it under your vision or over your vision to make the save, whatever it is really, up top corners and you have go with your stick at it, then you have to go with your stick.

Okay, the next piece of kit is the goalkeeping stick. You can see it's quite different to a normal stick, it's a lot lighter and generally a lot thinner as well because you're not having to put any power to hitting with it. Any point if you need to move the ball on the floor with this, you're never really sweeping it.

So it's got a kink in the shaft and a head that comes right away round like a U-shaped, generally that's just to give you a greater saving area and we're making saves up high or going down to your right-hand side and saving to your corners. It's to give a really good barrier and stop the ball getting in from the four corners. The last bit of kit is the helmet, one of the more important parts to save those few brain cells that those goalkeepers have got.

And just literally, you don't want to be making saves with head and that's it, pretty much given and it's there for your protection and at any point, there has to be a helmet on the goalkeeper for the game to be carrying on. So, that's one of my most important kits. When you're keeping most of the saves that you're going to make if you've got guys coming to you, you can cheat pretty well who can be very much with reac