Off-Ice with Adam Francilia: Prone Lateral Ball Roll

Adam Francilia, who works with some of the best goalies in the game, has kindly shared with InGoal Members a number of exercises he uses with his pro clients. One of the features we always see is a tie in between the off-ice work being done and a specific technique being taught on the ice.

Today’s exercise is the fourth in a series designed to train neuromuscular patterns to avoid counter-rotation when moving laterally on the ice. Previous articles in this series include Horse Stance Dynamic 90-degrees, single leg kneeling abduction and last week we presented the third, the supine lateral ball roll. Together the four exercises can make up a 30-minute core workout done as part of your regular off-ice training. 

If you’d like to learn more about counter-rotation, a great place to start is Carter Hart’s excellent pro-read where he calls himself out for making this common error that causes delay in movement that will also challenge your ability to remain square as you push to move laterally.

This week’s exercise will look surprisingly simple but as Francilia points out — it’s only easy if you are doing it incorrectly. You may well even feel you are doing it correctly, only to find out that those ingrained neuromuscular patterns are fooling you! We suggest you have someone watch this with you and help you evaluate your technique or you could even use your phone to film your reps and be your own coach once you thoroughly understand the goal of the exercise. 

As always, please watch the video through in its entirety to ensure a complete understanding of both the purpose and the technique as well as key teaching points to focus on before attempting it yourself. Francilia suggests you do 2-3 sets of 5 repetitions in each direction on the ball as part of your regular training.