Merzlikins put the time in to be ready for upcoming season

It was delivered as a bit of a joke, but there certainly was a lot of truth when Elvis Merzlikins said it in a recent interview.
"I've never seen a fat goalie," the Blue Jackets netminder said with a laugh.

And outside of a Disney movie where the biggest kid is put in the net to take up the most space, Merzlikins is right. The position of hockey goaltender might be one of the most demanding in sports from a physical standpoint, requiring balance, core strength, nearly unmatched flexibility, freakish reflexes and the stamina to handle 60 minutes of all-out effort while wearing up to 50 pounds of gear seemingly designed to trap heat near the body.
Add it all up and there has to be a physical plan for goalies to handle all that is thrown -- or shot -- at them during a season, and it starts each offseason.

For Merzlikins, that meant a change over the past few months from the approach he brought with him when he arrived in Columbus in the summer of 2019. To prepare for his initial NHL campaign, he wanted to be ready for the rigors of what he expected to be a difficult season from a physical standpoint, so he focused a lot on cardio to make sure his internal engine was ready to take on a tough workload and endless travel while facing the best players in the world.
This offseason, the plan was a little different, with more of a focus on core strength that he believes will help him during the season.
"Last summer, I didn't know what to expect from the NHL," he said. "I just knew it was the best league in the world. They are the best players, so I was more working hard on my cardio. I was running a lot, I was doing cardio a lot, I was doing circuits a lot.
"Well now when I know the league -- well, I know a little bit how the league works, how is the hockey here. I didn't focus as much on my cardio because I already understand and know how hard it is here, so I was more thinking about getting stronger in my hips, my back, my core."
One of the more unique ways Merzlikins was able to do that included one of the simplest pieces of gym equipment -- the exercise ball. In workouts he posted on Instagram over the past few months, Merzlikins showed how he mastered the art of balancing himself on the unstable surface of an exercise ball, a workout he wanted to try after seeing one of his trainers back in Europe doing it while the goalie was in the midst of his first season in Columbus.
"I asked him what it is about, and he told me it works on everything -- its core, hips, groins at the same time," Merzlikins said. "When you are on that ball, you have to balance everything. You can't just stand up on the ball that easily. To just stay on my knees stable, not moving, it took me a few days of practice. Then in the end just getting up on the ball, it took me like a week. I was just trying and trying, and then after a while I could just jump on it and stay stable.
"I tell you, it's a great exercise I think for goalies in my opinion because you have all that core, groins and hips working at the same time and you are making them stronger. And then I told him to try to throw me a ball of 20 pounds, so I am going to have to catch it but at the same time I have to stabilize my core and everything to be stable on the ball and not fall. That was great practice as well. It's very tough. It's interesting. I really liked it. I felt great. I felt really sore after that, so that was a really good workout."
Another unique aspect that Merzlikins added into his routine this offseason was working with a virtual reality trainer called Sense Arena that has started to gain traction in the goalie world.
As one can imagine, it's difficult to simulate what a goalie sees on the ice without actually being on the ice, but the Sense Arena allows goalies to get reps on everything from reading shot releases to simulating saves to tracking pucks in a way that doesn't tax the body as much as repetitive on-ice training would.
It's not quite yet a perfect tool, Merzlikins said -- you can't slide from post to post on your living room floor quite like you can on a sheet of ice, for example -- but it was a new and useful way to fit in more training time during the offseason.
"I think they did a really great job to invent something like this," Merzlikins said. "Especially right now when you have to quarantine, you can still practice. Maybe in the living room it's a little bit tough, but I brought it to gym and I practiced in the boxing ring, and I tell you, I was sweating a lot, like a real practice on the ice.
"It's fun. It's really realistic. Even during the shutdown, if I had had that one, I would have used it every single day I think. It's great practice."
The Sense Arena also gave Merzlikins the chance to show his wife, Aleksandra, what he sees while on the ice, though he admits she wasn't too excited to see virtual picks flying her way.
"I showed her what my job is like, and yeah, she didn't agree on that," he said. "She said, 'That's cool to see how I am on the ice right now, but they are shooting too hard. I can't see it,' so she wasn't happy about that. She still did some saves, though."
Merzlikins spent most of his offseason back in Europe working to get ready for the upcoming campaign, mostly working five days a week on his training while also finding time to relax including a trip to Lausanne, Switzerland, to visit friends. The return to Switzerland, where he starred for HC Lugano in the southern Italian-speaking region of Ticino, also gave him a chance to get some ice time with his old squad and rekindle some old friendships.
Though Merzlikins said he's ready to get things going now that he's returned to Columbus, his return to his home continent was also a tough one thanks to the pandemic. Offseason rhythms have been altered for pretty much everyone in the NHL, and it was no different for the goalie, who did his best to still get ready for what's next.
"It's hard to program your schedule," he said. "Usually with summer … you know when to start easy, when to push harder, when to go on vacation. You leave for a week somewhere in Europe just to take off from hockey, then you get back to work. Right now it's hard because first of all, you couldn't go anywhere. It was hard to get some vacation, and even preparation, it's hard because you don't know when you're going to start to play."
Hopefully, the answer now is sooner rather than later.