Training Collin Delia of the Chicago Blackhawks
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Go behind the scenes and get an inside look at Collin Delia's offseason training regimen.
NHL.com
Goalies moving beyond yoga to body-control disciplines in workouts
Adding Pilates, ELDOA, Barre to training helping to increase flexibility
by Kevin Woodley / NHL.com Independent Correspondent
Collin Delia isn't making career plans for his 5-month-old son yet. But if Anderson Delia chooses to follow his dad into the crease, the Chicago Blackhawks goalie has evolving ideas on how to help him train.
Delia added Pilates as part of an offseason training plan that already included yoga and quickly became a believer in benefits that he sees as specifically related to stopping pucks.
The 26-year-old isn't alone; though yoga has increasingly become a staple for goalies during the past decade, many have turned to other seemingly related body-control disciplines like Pilates, ELDOA and even Barre ballet-style workouts in the past year.
"If my son decides to become a goalie, I'm going to have him in Pilates as soon as he can and I'm going to have him in gymnastics, just to make him a good athlete," Delia said. "Having that ability to be flexible and also powerful, I feel like that's something that contributes to a long career."
Delia was already interested in Pilates, which focuses on core strength, stability and muscle control emphasizing proper postural alignment, sometimes using a machine called a Reformer. But it took a push from his partner, Ava Lammers, to finally get him into a class this summer.
"I always thought there'd be a lot of benefit and crossover as a goaltender, so she booked me a class and said, 'You better be there,'" said Delia, who will compete with Malcolm Subban and Kevin Lankinen for the No.1 job in Chicago this season. "I fell in love with it. If you've ever done yoga -- and I'm a huge proponent of yoga -- you get into that flow state where time melts away and it feels like you've been there for a couple seconds and an hour and a half is gone. I'm still doing my foundational things -- in the gym five days a week, on the ice a couple days -- but I think adding these little things here and there I think can make the difference in the long run and help me have a longer career."