The second half of the season is slowly getting underway, and many goalkeepers are struggling with quite serious issues in the sometimes inhospitable cold local conditions. How to keep your hands and actually your whole body at the ideal temperature so that I don't have to wear a ton of clothes and catching is comfortable?
Prepare properly for performance
To ensure that you don't feel cold and your performance isn't limited by bad conditions, you need to address this already in the locker room. It's important to dress properly, preferably in some tighter compression thermal wear that prevents heat from escaping the body. Another option is to apply a warming ointment to larger muscles that suffer from the cold, like your thighs. But be careful not to overdo it! The absolute basics are to have dry clothes. Wet clothes will cool you down very quickly, and as a result, you'll feel cold. Windbreakers or shell jackets are also a good idea, especially in rainy weather.
The foundation is movement
When you arrive on the field, the first thing you should focus on is warming up your body. It's really hard to stretch your muscles if you've just arrived at training and barely got dressed in the locker room. Do a few widths, do a few push-ups or squats. It's also very good to do some more dynamic exercises, like lower or higher skipping, known in football slang as 'high knees' and 'quick feet'. Only after warming up your entire body as a whole can you move on to stretching. But be careful not to cool down again, so stretching your muscles should again be at least partially in motion.
Don't go into the goal with mittens!
If there's one very common problem among goalkeepers, from the first league down to the district level, it's cold hands. Yes, the cold on the most important part of a goalkeeper's body is an obstacle that not only weakens performance but also increases the risk of injury. What can you do about it? That's actually a question that all goalkeepers still struggle with today. Some try to warm their hands under their gloves with additional fabrics, such as wearing silicone (medical) gloves. Just a little powder underneath, and your hands will stay dry and warm. The problem is that you lose quite a bit of feel for the ball. Others stuff warming pads into their gloves, which heat up due to a chemical reaction after breaking an ampoule inside. Again, we encounter a problem. The pads are usually not the ideal size, so your hands will have quite limited movement. In my opinion, the best thing is simply to keep moving your fingers. All the time. Because that's the only way to keep at least a little warmth in your hands while also maintaining your feel.
