Evolving Performance

Episode 2: Goalie-Specific Training for Hockey

• Season 1 • Episode 2

Share episode

In this episode, Maria Mountain, who specializes in goalie-specific training for hockey, shares her insights on:

  • What makes the goalie position unique from forwards and defensemen and the implications this has for off-ice training
  • Why certain methods lead to goalies “over pushing” and getting out of position, and specific strategies to fix the issue
  • The role of strength training for goalies, and important information for goalies who don’t want to get too “bulky”
  • Differences in the conditioning demands of practices and games for goalies, and how coaches can alter drills to improve their goalies’ development
  • Key considerations for avoiding hip injuries and maximizing durability throughout the season

In this episode, Maria provides several practical examples of exercises goalies should integrate into their routines. I'd highly encourage you to watch the video of this episode on my YouTube channel (Goalie-Specific Training) and to check out her social channels below, which are packed with exercise demos for goalies. 

Evolve with Maria:

Supporting High Performance
Metabolic Elite's entire line is designed to specifically support the health, performance, and recovery of high performers. Each product is formulated using research-supported ingredients and dosages using the highest quality ingredients, so you can be confident that every product you take will deliver the maximal benefit and effect.

Check out why Metabolic Elite's Liposomal Tablet delivery system is a game-changer: LPT White Paper

Save 15% using the code 'neeld15' at checkout here: Metabolic Elite

My personal go-to's:

  • To improve focus, decision making, and coordination: Synapsin
  • To improve inflammation and recovery: Tetra Cur
  • To support the immune system and weight management: Viraxall
  • To improve digestive health: Max 12 Probiotic

Contact Kevin:

Thanks for listening!

Kevin Neeld (00:00)
Cool. Maria, thanks so much for being here.

Maria (00:02)
My pleasure, Kev.

Kevin Neeld (00:03)
so, you know, when you and I first connected years ago, you were helping a lot of hockey players, both, in person and then through your online programs as well. But, it's been the last several years that you've really focused all of your attention on hockey goalies. So, you know, I think there's always this debate about whether goalies need their own programs or if they should just do what other players do. And, you know, to help create a backdrop for the rest of this conversation, can you talk about what makes the goalie position unique compared to forwards and defensemen?

Maria (00:32)
Well, it's a lot. I look at it as they're playing a completely different sport in terms of their movement profiles and their energy system use. But I think it is the very small space that they have to work within. It's the repeat sprinter part of it and we don't know how long the race is. So it's, you know, a skater, yeah, they might, you know, be out there at the end of the game for two minutes on a power play or something. But for the most part, the shift is sort of within this, these parameters, but the goalie, you know, we don't know how long each sprint is going to be. Obviously the stress and the strain of playing that position.

You know, there's just, yeah, there's so many elements that make it, make it different.

Kevin Neeld (01:20)
Kind of along those same lines when, when players, when Fords and defensemen talk about their off ice training goals, you know, you often hear things like, I need to improve my first step or first step quickness, or, you know, I need to get stronger to win battles or, you know, I'm, I'm, kind of falling off at the end of games. I need to improve my conditioning. What are, what are some of the most common goals that you hear from goalies and things that they're looking to address in their off season training?

Maria (01:48)
Well, it's interesting because there are a lot of shiny objects in the goalie world. So I will talk to goalies, say, well, I need to become a better puck handler, which I wholeheartedly endorse. You know, I think of a goaltender as an athlete who is a hockey player who plays goal. And I think the role of puck handling for a goalie is going to get more and more like a, I don't follow the NFL that closely, but are there any quarterbacks in the NFL that don't run? It's a key element and I think puck handling will be the same for goalies. But when I ask them, what are you doing for your puck handling? Well, I shoot 100 pucks a day. Okay, so you don't wanna do puck handling, you wanna score a goalie goal. Which, it's like happens what, two or three times, twice a season maybe, once a season.

So they get these shiny objects. So that's one. So we have to kind of redirect them to actual puck handling. The other one is, I need to improve my hip mobility. Yes, you do. What area, what do you feel on the ice? Well, I want to be able to do the splits. So again, it's, okay, you know, redirecting them and I've changed my thinking on that a little bit, but acknowledge that not everybody's hips can do the splits. So yes, we want to maximize your mobility, so flexibility plus control, but our goal isn't to just have you kicking out. If you're doing a split save, you've done something really wrong. And not that you don't need that tool. And then I think the other one is speed and that quickness on the ice, and especially if it's a little bit of a smaller goalie, they need to be a lot faster because it can't just...

take up as much ice with their net with their body.

Kevin Neeld (03:34)
Yeah, there's a couple of things that really jump out there. I think the idea of, especially in a world where everybody's on social media and you're seeing, my seven -year -old son will find these series of videos on YouTube in every sport where they're just doing trick shots and he's just completely enamored with that spectacle. And I think a lot of players see those things and then that becomes how they're spending a lot of their practice time instead of focusing more effort on some of the big rocks that are going to have a more profound impact on their performance. But, you know, the speed thing with goalies is interesting because as you mentioned before, they operate in such a confined space relative to the other players on the ice. 

And, you know, I, several years ago, I worked with the division one goalie that had a really good summer of training with us. And when he started to skate more at the end of the summer, I remember, you know, he came back into the gym and I just said like, Hey, how are things going? And he's, he had made the comment that he felt like he was so much more powerful in his lower body that he was actually pushing past the positions he needed to be on the ice. And, you know, I, when I got done patting myself on the back for how powerful he felt, I realized that, you know, there was probably a lesson to be learned in that feedback that you know, a lot of these, the lateral bounds, diagonal bounds, you know, a lot of these jumping patterns that are certainly common in the programs of hockey players really at all ages. You know, there, there may be, there may be some unique considerations for goalies that I was overlooking certainly then. And, you know, I, there was a recalibration process for the goalie and then he pieced it back together with a little bit more on ice work, but I remember talking to you about that situation and you had some really good suggestions on things that you were starting to incorporate from more of a speed and power development standpoint. So can you enlighten us on what some of those things were? If you remember back to that conversation.

Maria (05:29)
Yeah, yeah for sure.

Yeah, I'll do my best but but that's normal like the goalies that I work with experience that too, especially if they take that break and maybe they don't skate until July and now we've done all this work and so they it does it is a recalibration process but I always just give them a heads up. Hey for the first maybe three skates you're going to be blowing way out of your crease and then so when I started I was the same. I was always you know in early videos big powerful pushes you know and

Then I started, about 10 years ago now, I started playing on the ice myself so that, so I could transfer my very successful road hockey goalie career to the ice as an adult. But, so I could learn, okay, what's, you know, like what's that one muscle that gets exhausted that I never thought of or what's, you know, something that's, that's much harder than it, than it looks. And so that's when I learned that, okay, I'm not.

I learned to play as an adult. When I do a big powerful push, I blow seven feet, eight feet out of my crease. So, you know, these goalies who've grown up skating and obviously stronger, more powerful than me, yes, we need that. Like sometimes you just need that big desperation push. But I started thinking more about grading these pushes and it kind of goes into something. And I was having a discussion at a camp that I was at more and more goalie coaches are wanting their goalies to have a narrower stance and

And sometimes when you ask, well, why is that? The answer is, well, because they're not powerful when they're in a wide stance. And the reason they're not powerful is because it's never trained and you don't need a big push. So I think of that, you know, that one inch punch they talk about Bruce Lee, he was so powerful, he could knock someone over with a one inch punch. And so we train more of that in the goalies having, you know, and having sort of doses. So I have my light push, my medium push and my hard push. And then the stance is going to depend on the situation. So yes, sometimes you want to have a narrower, you know, more relaxed stance when the puck's outside, but as it comes in, you still want to have that power in close. And then the other thing is that we never used to train is bottom up strength and bottom up power. And so again, I learned that when I started the ice like wow.

Getting up from the butterfly is a lot harder than coming, like doing a squat. So a squat or a split squat, we start at the top, we go down, we come back up. It's very different from starting at the bottom in a standstill and then coming up, both strength and power. So that's another one we work on from stance, outer range, pushes, different varying degrees from the butterfly or from like a kneeling position, different degrees of push.

Kevin Neeld (08:18)
Yeah. So you hit on a couple of things that I want to circle back to. One is, is the actual, the angle between the foot and the hip that the goalies are pushing from. So, you know, that narrow stance, the feet are a little bit closer to, underneath the shoulders, or the wider stance, the feet are typically outside the shoulders, which creates not just a different pushing angle, but, also it's, it's coming from a very different position of the hip. 

And, you know, obviously there's, there's a range within any joint where, you know, the strength and the power and speed that you're developing at that range will transfer within, you know, kind of a narrow pendulum around that specific position. But it sounds like you're advocating for, for more importance and more of a presence of training at wider angles with the goalies to develop, you know, that, that quickness in the push from, from more abducted or wider hit positions.

Maria (09:14)
don't know if it's more important but we definitely don't want to ignore it. And I think that variation is good too. Teaching those muscles to work in a variety of angles and positions I think also reduces a little bit of wear and tear. You know, makes the muscles or their nervous system a little smarter but reduces wear and tear a little bit.

Kevin Neeld (09:18)
Okay.

And then from, from the, you know, I think of it like the amplitude of how far the push is. Can you go into a little bit more detail on maybe a couple of examples of how you would apply that concept? So, you know, like what would, if there's an exercise in describe here that would highlight that, I think that would help. You know, I've, I've seen you do it and we've gone through it together, but you know, the first time that we went through it, I had not seen anybody doing anything like some of the exercises that you suggested. So, just for the listener to have a little bit more of a concrete picture of what that might look like.

Maria (10:07)
Yeah, the one that pops into my head right off the hop, and again, it would sort of follow a progression to building strength and then building power. But let's say we're trying to work on outer range strength. So overcoming isometrics are like, I don't know that there's, I can't think of a better way for building strength in that position. So getting against that immovable object and then you can do it from standing. So getting push in here, here, here, you know, we'll do sometimes three -way pushes, doing the same from the butterfly, different ranges. And then we can do some like with resistance bands, kind of working the same thing, like getting a resistance band attached to the power rack, but getting in that outer range push, push, you know, coming back, certainly from the butterfly, same thing, or working just on getting an outer range recovery and push.

Those are a few ideas. Does that help?

Kevin Neeld (11:05)
That was great. And if you're listening to this, Maria just gave a couple good visual demonstrations that when we get this teed up on YouTube, you'll be able to circle back and watch some of those there. That overcoming isometric idea, I like a lot because you don't need, you know, I always think back to, obviously with Boston, we're very fortunate with the resources that we have, but, you know, I think back to my time working in youth hockey where we had a, you know, 300 square foot party room and 18 kids in there all at once. And, you know, I was some of those isometric ideas. You just, you know, a wall that's not going to move, you know, or a rack that's screwed into the ground, whatever the case is, and you're, you're good to go. you know,

Maria (11:48)
Yeah, yeah, it's a go-to at camps. You know, it's yeah, it's perfect.

Kevin Neeld (11:52)
Earlier when you were talking about some of the goals that you hear from goalies, one thing that was notably absent from that list was getting stronger. And I think that, you know, goalies, you know, I obviously every, every goal is a little different. I don't, mean to stereotype the entire position, but I have heard from that position more than any other, you know, like I don't want to get too strong because I don't want to get bulky. And there's still this kind of pervasive idea that as you get stronger, you lose range of motion, you lose mobility.

I think though, as part of that, there are some unique considerations with goalies where, you know, they're, they're not engaged in the physical battles that other players are in the, contact element and the injury risk reduction that strength can offer for some of the other skaters is a little different for goalies. So, you know, I'm curious on what's your take on the importance of strength training for goalies and then, you know, related to that.

At what point are you identifying that this goal is strong enough and we should really focus more of our efforts, not that you stop strength training, but more of our efforts on other qualities.

Maria (12:56)
Yeah, so it's, and it runs the spectrum because you get some goalies too, you know, more like high school, college goalies that they just want to be jacked and they want to lift as heavy as they can lift. And so it's, it's sort of reigning them in a little. And then there are the goalies that will tell me, and like, don't worry. I don't lift heavy weights. I use just light weights and high reps, or I just do body weight, or I, you know, I just do bands. Thank you, Tom Brady.

So it's trying to get them, yeah, like understanding that if they're training the right way, they're not gonna get overly bulky. They'll be able to keep and improve their mobility, you know, as if they weren't strength training. So that the two go hand in hand. And really when I do mobility training with them, it's almost like a specialized type of strength training. So that's kind of the answer to the first part. When are they strong enough?

It's a little bit of a judgment call, but you know, we'll do kind of regular front squats, maybe in the second phase of our off season and trap bar deadlift, maybe in the second and third phase. But then we go to single leg squat lateral, a little bit more specific pattern. So I'm never, I'm never trying to, you know, see how, how much can we get? And I think when I was younger, probably it was like, I got this guy, you know trap bar deadlifting, like, you know, and you've got all the plates on and the collars are just holding on my little smidgen. But, you know, I think just for the wear and tear on the body, that's not worth, really for any athlete, it's not worth it. So it's like, okay, we've got a good baseline here. Let's get you, how stable are you in producing that strength? How can we challenge that a little bit more? Still using your strength, but add a little more challenge.

Kevin Neeld (14:49)
Yeah, there's a couple of big things there. I think, you know, the, you had mentioned the specialized mobility is almost a form of strength training. And, you know, I, I do think that when people hear the word strength, they think of traditional exercises, you know, the squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing, or, you know, dumbbell derivatives of those in.

You know, you can get somebody in like a quadruped or hands and knees position and ask them to lift their leg up to the side. And then they're pinned because they don't have the strength in that position to be able to lift their own legs. So, you know, there, there's certainly, and some of those positions, you know, you know, are certainly more specific to the needs of the goalie position or to hockey players than others. But, you know, I think being strong in, in different patterns and different ranges of motion, with different starting points, like you mentioned before, you know, kind of that bottoms up idea that caught your attention when you got on the ice as a goalie. All of those things I think could be really important. You know, I want to circle back. You had brought up the lightweight high rep idea and, you know, there's, I have a few thoughts on that, but you know, what are your, what's your feedback to a goalie that has been training with a program or, you know, with exercises where they're really focused on lighter weights, higher reps. And, you know, obviously you want to encourage the effort, but maybe redirect the, the intense a little bit. What's your feedback for a goalie that tells you that that's how they're training.

Maria (16:19)
Well, I usually just try to explain to them, you know, what are we training for? What is the outcome we want to feel on the ice? Why do you go to the gym? What do you want to achieve? And usually, it's to stop more pucks. Speed is usually an element of that. So then just explaining, okay, because we're not going to tap into your fast twitch fibers doing high reps with a lightweight. We need to go more intense to build that strength to get those motor units firing, to build that reservoir of strength and then teach you how to apply it very explosively. But then also explain stabilizers, they are the ones, they do need stamina. So we're gonna stay pretty light with those muscles that are deep to the joint. So we're not gonna make those, like we're not gonna try to make those, and like I know it doesn't really happen, we're not gonna make those restrictive. We're gonna stay pretty light and do higher repetitions and teach them to be really, really smart and have the stamina to support your joints. So usually when you explain it that way, it works.

Kevin Neeld (17:19)
All that makes sense. I think that there can be some value if, obviously depending on the training goal and the athlete and what situation they're in, but when you're lifting lightweights for high reps, if you're going to or approaching failure, then there can be some, some changes that, some adaptations to that training as far as slow Twitch hypertrophy and maybe some low position endurance, depending on your method, there's some things that can come out of that that can be really beneficial. But, you know, I find most of the time when that's how somebody describes their training program, they're not training heavy enough or close enough to failure to get any of those changes. And really what's happening is, you know, they're kind of creating this stimulus that's more or less a glorified warmup, you know, more, more than anything else. 

So, you know, I think the emphasis on, you know, starting back with what are we trying to accomplish in the game? And then working back from there, certainly makes a lot of sense. But, you know, I think just really understanding too, that like, if you do stuff body weight and you're not fatiguing to a point where you almost feel like you can't go anymore, you're not getting any real significant muscular adaptations or really any conditioning, stimulus there. So,

But I want to, you know, you and I have talked in the past that at many levels, goalies are almost like the forgotten position. You know, it's pretty rare that practices are designed with the goalies needs in mind. So, you know, I'm, I'm curious and we'll talk a little bit about, you know, kind of the differences in the conditioning demands between goalies and practices and games at a second. But, you've had these opportunities now to work at a lot of camps alongside goalies on the ice, alongside goalie coaches, you know, alongside regular coaches as well. Do you have any advice for coaches on strategies that they can employ within their practices that, you know, may help facilitate or at the very least not get in the way or not hinder the development of their goalies? You know, I obviously without disrupting the flow of the rest of practice, cause you know, there's a lot of players that need to be accounted for.

Maria (19:27)
Yeah, and it's tricky for sure. I think a thing that coaches might not appreciate or understand is that practice, and I always come to you and I say, what does the heart rate data look like? And I talked to other coaches that have access to some of those metrics, because I'm a low tech type. But the energy system that's getting trained in practices isn't the energy system they need to be successful in games. So it's like if I took my Olympic 200, 400 meter champion, and then all our training sessions other than races were spent running 1500s, repeat 1500s. You know, intuitively anybody can say, well, that's why would you do that? You know, but it's a similar to what happens to goalies in practice.

I like the three goalie idea. Goalies do not. The last thing they want is to walk in the locker room and see another set, three sets of goalie, like two other sets of goalie year in there. But I think it's a good way to kind of keep the players rolling, but give the goalies that work to rest interval. The other thing too is if you look at where shots are taken in practice, it's not where goals are scored in the game. So making it more game -like, like not having the...

Like guys come in and then, you know, take a repper from sort of the middle of the ice in front of the net. Getting them handling the puck more. So a goalie coach that I know, you know, he has the team start a lot of drills with a dump in. So the goalie has to play the puck and, you know, it goes from there. So those are a couple of suggestions, but the energy system is a big one for me. It's like you're training this athlete who's really crucial to the success of your team to do a different something that isn't what they need in the game.

Kevin Neeld (21:19)
So let's dive into that a little bit more. You know, I know I've, I've shared an image from our mutual friend, Devan McConnell, that he had sent me years ago of the heart rate response for one of his goalies in a game and in practice. And I think it was pretty eyeopening just in how substantially different the two visuals were, where, you know, obviously it's automatically color coding as the goalies reaching a certain percentage of their max. And you know, the the visual there was that games look significantly different from practices. So can you talk about, you know, what, what conditioning in a game looks like for a goalie and how that contrast to what most goalies go through in practice?

Maria (22:00)
Well, in practice, the heart rate goes up and stays up for extended periods of time. And then when the coaches stop the drill and talk, it comes down and then it goes up and it stays up. And in a game, it's more peaks and valleys like that repeat sprinting. So the energy system should more closely reflect that.

Kevin Neeld (22:21)
Yeah, I think the, the two things that I remember from that image in particular were just that there, there was almost no recovery window in practice. Like you just mentioned that, you know, they were kind of up and staying up, which, you know, I think you had mentioned before that it's the goaltending position is a repeat sprint effort, but you don't know how long that's going to be. You know, the team can get kind of hemmed into their own zone and there might be several minutes where the goalie is working and some of those extended duration efforts in practice probably prepare the goalie somewhat with the foundational endurance to be able to endure through those situations. But the majority of the time it's not, it's, you know, there were higher peaks in games, but with lower valleys. So there were much more opportunities to recover. So, you know, I think having both can be really important.

Maria (23:09)
Yeah, anything.

Yeah, but I think strategically. So I'm fine with that. Like I call it survival training. And in the off season, we'll do the I make up these circuits, I call them super PK circuits, and they're just awful. But it's like, okay, nothing's gonna be worse than that. And so I think that's fine to add at the end of practice. But if you we want goalies practicing a skill, and being sharp on their skills. And we all know when you're so when you're crushed, you're not able to be sharp.

I think another thing is that, you know, if you say, well, maybe we should have three goalies or give the goalies more rest. It's kind of a, the practice is too hard for the goalie. And it's like, well, no, it's not too hard. It's, it is hard, but it's training them to do a different sport. That's, that's the problem of it. Not that, you know, you're going to hurt the goalies feelings because practice is too hard.

Kevin Neeld (24:03)
Yeah, it's interesting because I think my experience is probably similar with yours that the goalies prefer to get the puck touches too. So, you know, even if maybe it comes at the expense of specificity of conditioning and then even, you know, the quality of execution, sometimes it's, they're not certainly not eager to give up the net to take a breather.

Maria (24:24)
They're not in and more than any athlete, you know, and I've trained lots of athletes from different sports, but goalies, you know, some goalies, their goal will be, I want to be the hardest worker. And it's like, why? Like, like I love hard work and I value it as well, but it's like what, like, let's be the best. Let's be the smartest worker. So I think that goes hand in hand too. Like, well, I don't want to look soft and say I'm tired or, you know, switch off too soon. It's like, I want to be the hardest worker on the ice.

Okay, well, like maybe there's an award for that. But I want to win the game. That's all.

Kevin Neeld (24:59)
Yeah, I think the it's important to keep the goal the goal and not get kind of lost in what you think is the best road to get there. It's really, you know, make sure that the strategies are all in line with helping you be as successful as possible, not necessarily just winning the effort award.

Maria (25:16)
Yeah, and yeah, like, and, and, okay, so I want to work harder than anybody else. Okay, so how are you going to measure that? It's kind of funny.

Kevin Neeld (25:25)
you know, I think with goalies with hockey players in general, but certainly with goalies, avoiding hip injuries is often a primary training goal. can you talk about how you approach building durability with the goalies you work with and, you know, maybe highlight a couple things that you hear from goalies and strategies that they're trying that you correct or that, you know, maybe you're well -intentioned, but a little bit misguided based on your understanding of, of hip anatomy and the injury pathology.

Maria (25:52)
I think, well, the thing that I think is intuitively they think they should stretch. And so they, some of them do stretch and they think they need to stretch for like an hour or two hours a day. And I think that sets them up for some failure because they're not building sort of usable strength in those end ranges or kind of.

So maybe even they're letting the body get into a vulnerable position where they have no control. So I could argue that maybe it increases the risk of injury.

So I think it's important to not, and we'll do static stretching. I'm not saying that it's, that it has no value, but the goal is always in trying to gain control in those outer ranges. So building that mobility. I think another issue when I talk with goalies and especially some of those goalies we talked about earlier who just want to lift heavy and they want a back squat and deadlift and as heavy as they can, we talk about.

adding wear and tear to the hip joints and how hip impingement is an overuse injury that develops over time. It's a cumulative trauma injury. And so what they'll say is, well, my hips don't hurt. My hips feel fine. It's like, I know your hips feel fine, 18 year old goalie or 15 year old goalie, but we want your hips to still be good when you're 22, 23. So I think that's another one. So it's...

Improving the mobility, which is a combination of the stability and flexibility. They're going to get in these awkward positions. You know, you look at the, that RVH position when they're, when they're, you know, pad is flat and their skate is against the post and they're, you know, leaning into it and getting in that close pack position. And you think, God, that's awful. You know, that's not good for the hip, but they're going to get in that position. So how can we maximize their control getting into and out of that position? So those.

Those are the things. And then, you know, trying to, when they're younger, a little bit limit reps. So if they're, they've got practice and games and they work with their goalie coach and then they're at this other set, it's like, let's just pick the quality stuff and focus on that and, you know, save some of those reps.

Kevin Neeld (28:03)
Do you, are there any things that you find that goalies are doing other than static stretching that, you know, either isn't helping or, you know, maybe they're doing some good things, but they're just not doing enough of it. Can you speak to that at all?

Maria (28:15)
I think they're just not making their hips smart enough and their hips and how their hips work with their torso smart enough. One of the exercises that I use with goalies all the time is just single knee balance. So getting in a half kneeling position and lifting up the front foot and then balancing on their knee and getting really good at controlling that balance just using the hip joint and the torso. I think they spend time in their butterfly moving around and they don't really necessarily have the best control of their hip. I like hip CARs too, as simple as it is, because when I do those at camps, even with very good goalies, if I do a hip CARs and I'm there coaching them like in person, I say, bring that knee up in front of you as high as you can. So getting into as much flexion as you can, they'll bring it like their thigh will be about parallel to the floor. And I can say, bring it as high as you can, stays parallel to the floor.

And if I bring my hand over and hold my hand at about belly button level in front of them, say, can you touch my hand with your knee? Yeah, boom. So they don't, if you had a baseball pitcher and you said, make as big a circle with your shoulders as you can, and they went to about shoulder height and flattened it off and came back around, you'd be like, what is going on with this? Like they don't even know what their shoulder does. Goalies don't even know what their hips do.

Kevin Neeld (29:36)
For somebody that is listening that may not know what CARs are, can you spell that out and describe that range of motion of the exercise that you just mentioned?

Maria (29:46)
Yeah, so it's a functional range conditioning technique. And so it stands for controlled articular rotations. And essentially, it's just a technique. So this is the other thing goalies tend to get fixated, like all I want to do is El Doha. And that's going to be all my training, you know, it's like, these are just different tools in your toolbox. So functional range conditioning and CARs is one, but it's kind of neat because the idea is to really explore all of your available range of motion and to get into those outer range positions and put input into that connective tissue of the joint where there's a lot of sensory receptors. So then your brain starts learning, holy smokes, we can go, you know, like I can lift my knee as high as my belly button. Wow, who knew that? And so it learns those patterns in the outer ranges that we've talked about a lot today. But then the other thing you can do is generate some intrinsic strength or intrinsic resistance. So the cue I always use is,

You know, if we're making, if we bend our knee as much as we can, flex our knee as much as we can, and we're making as big a circle with our knee, like if we had a pen, you know, taped to our knee, we'd be tracing a big, big circle, but we create tension as if we're, as if our leg is in a bucket of honey, you know, so we have to push against that and create tension and create strength. That helps our brain learn, hey, wow, you're actually really strong in these positions.

So it releases a little bit of that neural governor. Sometimes goalies stretch at home. And they say at home, I can do the splits, no problem. But when I get on the ice, I can't. And it's because their brain knows, well, you have no control. So let's not do that. But if we can teach our brain and actually build that strength in the outer ranges, it's like, okay, yeah, this is pretty good. Let's use it.

Kevin Neeld (31:35)
Yeah, I think that idea of building internal tension, the, the honey bucket analogy used, I think is perfect, but you know, it speaks to the importance of, of going through those exercises with the right intent, because, you know, if you're just swinging your knee around in a big circle, you're not really going to get any of the benefit of those exercises, but you know, if you can create a stable pelvic position and then create some of that internal tension, you're, you know, activating a lot of the receptors you mentioned and also starting to build a little bit of strength and a sense of control in some of those outer ranges, which, you know, as you mentioned before, we've talked a lot about today.

Maria (32:11)
Well, and you hit on a really important point that I should have mentioned when we were talking about hip injuries, that the anterior, like a stable pelvis position. And, you know, the pelvis is going to move through different, it's not always going to be neutral. But when goalies have that typical anterior pelvic tilt, so kind of sticking their bum out behind them and sort of increasing the arch in their lower back, just like skaters have, it's a common posture. It's not, you know, anything crazy but for a goalie, especially when they're moving out of the butterfly, that's a big problem because now they don't have that hip flexion. You know, they've lost some of the hip flexion because their pelvis is tilted forward so they run out of space sooner. So they're recovering that skate to push from the butterfly. You know, they're going to be running into the front of their hip joint, which again is adding wear and tear, not to say that, that's painful, but it's adding wear and tear over time.

So trying to teach goalies too to have awareness of neutral pelvis. And so then they want to say, well, when they're on the ice, well, is my pelvis neutral? You know, and it's, I find it impossible to tell when a goalie is wearing like goalie pants, a chest protector. And that's not where it matters. Where it matters is in your everyday life, trying to retrain your brain that this is my posture, you know, rather than something like, I'm going to be a neutral pelvis now. Well, no, just,

We want to correct it throughout your day and then just have it become your new normal.

Kevin Neeld (33:41)
Yeah, no, I think that's a great point and that the playing hockey and pretty much every sport at some point, you're going to be in compromised positions that, you know, people who work in the medical professional would not say are ideal for your joint health. And, you know, a lot of the battle is just minimizing the unnecessary wear and tear away from the sport. So, you know, obviously you want to prepare the athletes to be able to get into and control some of those positions to the best of your ability. But, you know, if you think of all of the total volume of stress that we have more control of outside of the actual competition schedule, that can have a major impact on the longevity and durability. And, you know, I sometimes use the analogy of the Grand Canyon that that started as a river.

And then just slowly over time, you know, obviously over the course of thousands and thousands of years that now the erosion that has taken place from, you know, the, forces of the river. And then eventually the wind that's kind of going through that alley is created. Has created the grand Canyon. And, you know, that is obviously a very grand scale example, but similar things happen with, with joint surfaces within the body that, you know, when you start to create more friction in the same areas over and over and over and over, particularly where you're not giving them a reprieve, an opportunity to recover and unload that you can start to create somewhere that, you know, obviously the longer you can delay that, the more you're going to delay symptoms and prolonged careers as players compete through the end of their careers and then through the rest of their life, really. Because obviously not everybody plays professionally. And I think one of the things that makes hockey great is that there's certainly a great adult league culture around North America too. So ideally people are staying as healthy as possible so they can enjoy the game for the rest of their lives.

Maria (35:42)
Yeah, that's the mission. You know, most goalies, that's the best they'll get out of it.

Kevin Neeld (35:48)
Cool. Well, Maria, this has been awesome. Where can the listeners connect with you and learn more about what you have going on?

Maria (35:54)
Probably easiest is Instagram. I'm just @goalietraining and I'm pretty good at answering my DMs eventually. Website is goalietrainingpro.com.

Kevin Neeld (36:04)
Cool, thanks Maria.

Maria (36:05)
You're welcome, Kev. Thanks.