After playing every minute of every 2011 San Jose Earthquakes’ regular season match except for the one against New England Revolution, goalkeeper Jon Busch was ready to allow himself a little vacation. The Quakes followed up a win over FC Dallas on October 22 in their regular season finale with a series of fitness tests on Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday afternoon, the players were free to leave for the off season.
Busch says that “I usually take about two weeks off as soon as we’ve done everything and shut everything down and kind of decompress as you will. And for me two weeks is usually enough to get away from working out and all that; I don’t like taking more time because the longer you take the longer/harder it takes to get back [to where you were].” Busch used his two weeks by staying in San Jose to have PRK (PhotoRefractive Keratectomy) lasik eye surgery done, followed by hanging out in his house, “vegging out” and then starting to work on another one of his side projects which was to start his own goalkeeping glove company.
But after those weeks ‘of doing nothing’, Busch made his way back to Columbus, Ohio and into a workout routine. The first four weeks were comprised of 3 - 4 days of spending an hour to an hour and half in the gym and not getting out on the field. “It’s just getting back into the swing of things and keeping your body fairly thin and not getting lazy.” Busch continues, “So I usually went 3 - 4 days in the gym the first four weeks just to start getting back into it and a lot of my work is plyometric based and explosive based; obviously for what I need on the field.”
After the four weeks of doing that, Busch gets into his second cycle of the next four weeks. “This is when it gets a bit more intense both in the gym and on the field. I start ramping it up a bit more, spending a little bit more time in there... I get to the combination of three days on the field doing goal keeper training and three days in the weight room again doing the explosive plyo cross jumps or Olympic lifting and all that stuff.”
While home in Columbus Busch says, “I run a full time goal keeper academy here in a building we opened four years ago at the training facility and what I usually have is four to six other professional goal keepers and/or college goal keepers that are home from school on their break that come in in the morning and we have a small group of guys that we all train together. So I’m kind of a goal keeper coach but also at the same time am training. So I’m kind of wearing both hats during that whole process.”
Busch does allow himself to enjoy a bit more sweets during the off-season, especially around the holidays when they “tend to be the best anyway.” He doesn't get too crazy with the diet, electing to get three to four good meals in a day. “We’re in the off-season so we need to enjoy some of it but at the same time, I’m still working out so I’m not too concerned about it. The nice thing for me, so far anyway, I’ve never real gained too much weight during an off-season so it’s not something on which I have to really spend a lot of time focusing.”
Jon flew back to San Jose on the eve of the Earthquakes pre-season camp in shape and ready to attack any ball that comes flying towards him.
If interested in Jon Busch’s new goal keeping glove line coming out at the end of January; it can be found at hpgoalkeeping.com.
(Photo: Kelley L. Cox, centerlinesoccer.com)
- Lisa Erickson also looked at how forward Chris Wondolowski trained during the off-season: The Wondo-ful Way to Prepare for the Pre-Season