NHL Sense Arena For Ice Hockey Goalies Review - Does it work for goalies, should you buy it and what are alternatives?

COMMON SENSE ARENA QUESTIONS I GET THAT I WILL GO OVER IN THIS REVIEW:

• What do you think about the Sense Arena and do you recommend it?

• Is the Sense Arena a good investment and worth buying?

• What is the difference between the Sense Arena and the Glove Club / Pro Hands Program?

In this article I will go over pros and cons of the NHL sense arena based on my observations and experiences. However, I want you to take this with a grain of salt because I have my own product that someways compete with what Sense Arena but they also compliment each other. In the perfect world you’d use both. Because for example, on game days you want to avoid screens (including virtual glasses) but you want to do coordination drills to warm up your arms, active nervous system and get your mindset sifted into game mode especially after long buss ride. That is a one sample situation where Sense Arena doesn’t work but if you live in an apartment in a city then Sense Arena is a must have.

To whom I recommend Sense Arena:

1. If you are a beginner goalie a combination of Sense Arena and The Glove Club drills will give you the best results because with Sense Arena you’ll get to see on ice scenarios. And with glove club drills you’ll get more reps in the same amount of time, you’ll increase your overall coordination and gray matter in the brain that will help you to learn on-ice techniques faster and with Glove Club speed drills you can get faster and more reactive hands that are critical in close range situations when you can’t do controlled technically perfect saves.

2. NHL Sense Arena can be a great tool when you don’t have an opportunity to do off-ice training as much as you’d want. For example, if you live in an apartment in a big city like New York, where you simply don’t have a place to throw a ball against a wall and catch it and can’t go to the rink early to train on your own, then getting Sense Arena can make lots of sense.

3. What I like about NHL Sense Arena are the drills where you have real players shooting because that can actually improve your shot reading and help you see real-life situations. But the drills where you have virtual bots shooting are almost a waste of time because you are not getting a real read for the shot, and you are not getting as many reps as you would with real-life off-ice drills. On top of that, you can get away with bad habits that real-life coordination drills don’t allow you to do. So, to get more game like situations Sense Arena is a good. “Poor man’s alternative” for the Sense Arena would be watching lots of hockey or your own games with pauses and slow motion to analyse situations and imaginary training. By the way, those alternatives have actually proven to produce good results so you want to be doing those things anyway.

In what cases I wouldn’t recommend NHL Sense Arena:

1. My biggest hesitation with Sense Arena is that I have seen it enforce bad habits due to virtual reality not recognizing small details in your hand positioning. But I have seen it also work great for goalies who are doing good reps.

2. On game days, you don’t want to use Sense Arena since you want to avoid screens (VR/phone/TV/computer) because watching blue light screens will tire your eyes and make your tracking worse. And what happens when you can’t track and see the puck well? Your reactions are slower, game reading worse and you’ll let more shots in. When you want to do coordination for a warm up use racquet balls as I’ll show you in The Glove Club.

3. Based on my experience so far, real-life training gives much better results for the time and effort invested. So, if you have limited time and energy due to school, team practices, and everything else, you want to put your time and energy into training that gives you the best return on investment, which is real-life training (lifting, running, jumping, coordination, ice training, etc.) not virtual training. But again, Sense Arena can be great addition if you are doing the must do basics already. Or if Sense Arena gets you training more and then you’ll start to do the basics better.

Should I buy Sense Arena, Glove Club Membership or put my money some where else?

I think that when your overall real life training is good enough, then you can start looking into extras like Sense Arena. For example, if a goalie has hard time getting up from a ground with a one leg the focus of off-ice training should be on strength to make the goalie stronger, not some fun to do light coordination stuff. So before buying a virtual gadget or glove club access for a youth-junior goalie worth a few hundred dollars, I’d spend the same money on a personal trainer to make him/her faster and stronger because if you have a weak physique, all the goalie clinics, camps, and gadgets aren’t going to get you to the pros including the Glove Club. I know my drills and programs work because I have seen it so many times and even weak goalies got much better hands with them. But due to weak body the improved catching didn’t do much for their overall performance because in a game you actually have to move a lot.

If you’ve read this far, don’t get me wrong—I think technology is great, and nothing gets better if we don’t start somewhere so I think it is great they have made the Sense Arena and it gets better all the time even real life training still produces better results at the moment.

Like I said, you want to take this with a grain of salt because I’m selling my own product. If you have bought Sense Arena I recommend to combine it with The Glove Club for the best results.

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE:

I recommend you combine NHL Sense Arena for hockey goalies with The Glove Club / pro hands program for the fastest and the best results. Just make sure your overall training is in right balance and the coordination stuff is only small part of what you do. Meaning that you do off-ice warm ups before ice sessions and cool downs after, strength training 2-4x / week depending on what time of the year it is, you play other sports, do extra cardio off the ice, different type of stretching before and after training sessions, etc. And yes, all this applies to U8-U12 goalies also. The amount and type of off-ice training just looks little bit different than what U20 goalies do.