Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the DIY Goalie Podcast, where hosts and goalie coaches Nathan Park and Connor Munday share their insights on how to become a better goalie.
Speaker: Hey goalies, welcome back to another episode of the DIY Goalie podcast presented True North Goaltending. Hope you guys are doing well. It is just me again today for another solo episode. and As we get right into camp season now, ah we'll probably have quite a few of these kind of solo quick hitter type episodes um just because right now there is quite a lot going on.
Speaker: um We're basically about a week and a half out from just nose to the grindstone grinding it out for probably three or four straight weeks and then we're right into the off or right into the regular season from there and basically going head down right to March and it's kind of crazy that we're already at that point we're a couple days away from August already um so here we are we're ah Right in the thick of things, as I'm sure you guys are too, prepping for tryouts. And some of you might already be right around the corner from starting skates already, depending on where you are playing.
Speaker: um But with that being said, the show goes on and we like to put something out once a week for you guys. Even if it is something quick that we can put together, we still want to give you guys something to think about, some actionable stuff to take away to try and improve your game. So with that being said, um last week we kind of talked about you know creating your goalie identity um and I had mentioned that there's a lot of stuff we've been doing behind the scenes in terms of working on goals. So I'm away from the ice things um and kind of leaning into the more introspective and and kind of self-reflection sort of stuff.
Speaker: um So that's something that, again, I know it sounds cheesy, but you guys, it really kind of helps ground you guys and it kind of helps get through the day-to-day grind especially when you get to the higher levels um hockey can start feeling a bit like a job it can feel a bit like a chore so if you have some of those frameworks kind of established and and some things that you can fall back on and and kind of you know hit the reset button have some self-reflection those sorts of things can really be beneficial so I encourage you guys to incorporate that into your
Speaker: um i guess approach and into your development a little bit more um you know stuff like goals stuff like you know the the goalie iq like the watching hockey and and the understanding the game and then taking that one step further and understanding yourself and what you're good at what you maybe need to work on those sorts of things that's really going to help you set yourself apart And the quicker you can kind of implement that, the easier it is to implement and the more kind of runway you get um to be working on that sort of stuff.
Speaker: Now, what I wanted to chat about today was kind of more on um the, I guess, the cognitive side of things.
Speaker: um We talk lots about the importance of cognitive training, but we've kind of really avoided, I guess, getting into the weeds of it a little bit. um Part of that's because we're still kind of navigating and and getting a better understanding of it.
Speaker: Part of it's also because we're necessarily not experts. um Like we don't have kind of the clinical background, um you know, so like the sports vision stuff. A lot of times is kind of ran by like optometrists and then you have kind of the psychological aspect of it too.
Speaker: um And so I want to dive into it, but I want to give kind of more of the goalie perspective and the goalie coach's perspective, as opposed to the clinical perspective, because obviously we don't really have the background to offer that information. um so I just want to kind of make that note, I guess, that This is based off of looking through certain resources and papers and stuff like that. However, again, i just, me personally, and I know Connor as well, we don't have that kind of formal background and education and training. So take that with a grain of salt. But I do want to kind of touch on some of the things from it From that goalie perspective, because the cognitive side of things, the processing side of things is incredibly important as goalies. If you think about it, we're trying to process upwards of 11 players in front of us and a puck. um We're trying to identify basically percentages. Like when we boil goaltending down, it's a lot of math. And I know a lot of you don't want to hear that, but it's basically angles and percentages or probabilities, right? So we're trying to give ourselves the highest possible chance to make a save.
Speaker: um And so a lot of that is trying to process ahead of time. What are the threats? What's the most likely outcome? What's the second most likely outcome? How can I prepare for those, right? Those are the sorts of things that, um,
Speaker: We work on with the cognitive training and the vision training. They kind of go hand in hand a little bit because a lot of the cognitive processing we do is based off of visual information. So our visual system is a big component of our cognitive system when we're playing goal. So they do kind of go hand in hand. um And basically what we want to do as goalies is we want to be able to process process more with less and that's kind of what we're aiming to do so how can i process the environment around me quicker with kind of less information right so the more that you train yourself cognitively the better that your brain becomes at
Speaker: processing that information quicker and kind of filling in the gaps a little bit too. um So if you take in less information but your your brain's kind of used to that a little bit, it can fill in the gaps a little bit better and make a more educated guess as to where things are going. So for example, if you think of a screen, when a shot comes through a screen and you can't see it,
Speaker: What your brain basically is trying to do is taking the information that it did pick up. So say you saw the initial release, but maybe it's a moving screen and somebody gets in front of your eyes while the shots coming into you.
Speaker: that basically that snapshot of time that you did see the puck, your brain can take a little bit of that information and process it and get a general idea of where the puck is going. um And so that's sort of one example of of what this sort of approach to training can help with, um because basically once you lose sight of that puck,
Speaker: you're You're trying to piece together that information to say, okay, I know that that puck was on a trajectory towards my blocker side. So some goalies, they slide over a little bit to that blocker side and just make themselves big. Some goalies just shift their body and kind of put out the the blocker. um Again, a lot of it will depend on A, how much information you actually gathered and then B, how good you are at processing that information. um
Speaker: So when you guys are, you know, working on your development plans, when you guys are both in season and off season, we should be doing some sort of cognitive training. And I think we hit it hard in the off season. And we just kind of you know, maintain during the season. It's kind of like working out, you know, in our off season, our workouts are really for building strength, you know, building speed, um those sorts of things like becoming more explosive, all of that stuff, more agile.
Speaker: And then during the season, a lot of our working out, yes, we're still kind of gaining strength and stuff throughout the regular season, but a lot of it's more so maintenance.
Speaker: And it's the same thing here. If you guys can really like load yourselves cognitively throughout the off season and then throughout the regular season, we kind of, you know, maintain more. So that's kind of a good approach. um There's also usually a lot going on during the season. So it might be tough to find time to fit some of this in.
Speaker: um But when you guys are approaching cognitive training, the big thing is is how can we add some sort of mental processing um and how can we work on building our visual systems. So for example, scanning, we do a lot, a lot of scanning as a goalie, right? Like we're looking off the puck constantly. We're looking for threats constantly, all of that sort of stuff. um
Speaker: That's kind of you know, one of the key tools. If you guys can do some sort of drill where you have to scan, look over your shoulder and take in some sort of information, like even if you have a partner holding up fingers and every couple of seconds, you know, they say go and you got to take a shoulder check. and yell out the amount of fingers they're holding up. Something as simple as that can really work on okay, how can i gather information as quickly as possible, doing a quick scan, and be able to generate that into an output. So in this case, you know you're you're actually saying what you see. Obviously in a game, what we're trying to simulate is
Speaker: scanning the threats and then processing, okay, I know that there's a threat there, there's a potential for a pass to the backside. Or it might be, oh I see that the defenseman is kind of open on the backside there, they might pinch down for, you know, kind of hitting that backside slot area or something like that. So Hitting the scanning is a very important one.
Speaker: um Another one that I don't think it's talked about a lot, but um is is still important to be able to process information is our peripheral vision. um So a lot of times, like obviously when we're tracking the puck, we're tracking in the middle of our field of vision, like that head trajectory, we're moving our head while we track so that we maintain that puck in the middle of our vision throughout the duration of our tracking.
Speaker: Because of that, we don't talk a lot about our peripheral vision. However, that peripheral vision is really important for gathering information, being able to see, you know, what's going on in the peripherals, getting an idea of where players are, even for like picking up rebounds, maybe stuff like that. Um,
Speaker: Those are the sorts of things where peripheral vision is important. And even again, just going something as simple like we talked about earlier with the scanning, we can do something similar with the peripheral. So you can have somebody standing at like a 45 degree angle from you while you're looking forward.
Speaker: And to increase the difficulty, you can be doing something like, you know, bouncing a ball off the wall, doing some ball work or something while somebody is off to the the side. And basically they're just holding up numbers or colors or whatever the case is. And while you're doing your ball work, you just see that change in your peripheral while you're still focused. And then you kind of yell to change. um While you're getting better at that, you might have the person more in front of you. And as you get better, they can go slowly more and more kind of towards your side um so that you're trying to really pick up on the outskirts of your peripheral vision.
Speaker: Um, another thing is though too, is anytime you can increase any sort of mental demand in a drill.
Speaker: Um, so one thing that I'm actually going trialing, um, and, uh, what is, gotta pull up what this is called. CMDT so cognitive motor dual tasking is something that I've been looking into quite a bit um and it's it's basically adding some sort of mental problem while doing physical exercise and what that's doing is that's basically training yourself to
Speaker: process information while you're doing something else, like while you're physically doing something else. And that translates fantastically to what we do as goalies, right? We are constantly processing while we are trying to, you know, move or make a save or, you know, whatever the case is, there's lots of times that we have to be basically multitasking. We're doing multiple things.
Speaker: And so if you can control your brain to or train your brain to um do that better, to be able to still give your body basically the signals that it needs to to perform while still trying to process and think and all that stuff, that is something that will drastically help your game on the ice.
Speaker: And it can be as simple as you are doing a skating drill and somebody is yelling out simple math problems like four times three and you know five times 10 or something like that, right? just Just throwing out examples there. But it can be something as easy as that, especially if you are starting out, you obviously want things to be simple and then you can kind of progress up from there.
Speaker: Um, but basically anything that can give yourself some of that cognitive function while you're still doing something physically, that's a great way to kind of cross train what's going to help with, with, uh, goaltending. Um, so again, even if it's off the ice, so say you're doing, i don't know, like lateral bounds, like those sideways jumps that you're bounding back and forth.
Speaker: You can do something like that, but you can add like colored pylons and have a partner yell a color that you got to um jump to. Or again, you can add math problems or whatever the case is while you were doing this physical task. um Again, that's that's referred to as cognitive motor dual tasking or CMDT. And that is something that is kind of interesting. And I'm going to be trialing a little bit with some of my goalies this season is to see, you know, when we're doing skating drills, if I throw a little kind of demand mentally on them as well, I'm curious to see what sort of progression, I guess, or development we get throughout this season. And so that's something that, uh,
Speaker: I'm going to be doing lots of or at least kind of playing around with this year. um And it's something that I think, um at least in theory and from everything I've read and all that stuff, I think it is going to make a bit of a difference.
Speaker: The amount of difference will will remain to be seen, but that's why I kind of am going to be playing around with that a little bit. um But it's something I would encourage you guys to try to, because, again,
Speaker: we can balance those two, the mental and the physical side of things, and have both of them working together as best as possible, um we can we can really have some interesting things happen on the ice.
Speaker: um Another one that is quite intriguing to me, um that I've kind of been reading a little bit about as well, is the whole, it's called the quiet eye.
Speaker: um And it's pretty, i i think for my understanding, it's a fairly well-known or fairly well-established like phenomenon for athletic development when it comes to stuff like baseball, hockey, those sorts of things. um Basically what the quiet eye refers to is actually that higher level athletes like goalies and hitters and baseball and stuff like that, the ones that are at the top of their game, at the top of their level of play, they they actually leave
Speaker: their target less with their eyes. So they focus more on their target for longer than people who aren't at that elite level.
Speaker: and I'm pretty sure it was Dr. Vickers, Dr. Joan Vickers was the one that introduced this and there's been a lot built on it since then.
Speaker: um But for example for goalies and i might have to pull up the um the research on this, i it's been a while since I've seen the paper on on the goalie side of things. So I might have to try and dig that up. um If I can find it, I'll throw it in the show notes. If not, I'm sure if you just look up like quiet eye, goaltending, you can find a lot. But um basically, the high level goalies are actually focusing longer on the puck before the shot is released. which is a little bit of I guess, contradictory to sometimes we talk about things like reading the release and reading the player and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker: um But a lot of that information tends to come subconsciously. And when we're actually in the act of making a save, we really want to narrow and laser that focus to that puck.
Speaker: And i I always used to joke when I played that I couldn't even tell you if it was, i mean, but when I played, Connor McDavid wasn't around. But as an example, I couldn't even tell you if Connor McDavid was coming down on me because...
Speaker: all I really was worried about was the puck. like And it was true. To be honest, I was not one of those goalies that had a playbook on players. I probably couldn't even tell you half, maybe three quarters of the names on teams that I played against because for me personally, it did not matter.
Speaker: I just cared about where that puck was. Now, since I become a coach and all that, i I have changed my stance on that a little bit, and I do think there is some merit to having some you know upfront information a little bit and have information on tendencies of players and to also kind of pick up some of those subtle keys with their body language.
Speaker: um But again, a lot of that tends to happen subconsciously and we're not actively using that information when we're thinking like it it just happens so fast that your brain kind of picks up those subtle tweaks anyways.
Speaker: Um, so this quiet eye phenomenon is something that I thought was quite interesting because, you know, maybe I, I kind of thought of it as a little bit of validation or whatever, but, um, it does show that there is some,
Speaker: merit I guess to being a little bit more focused on the puck itself and less on the actual release and leave that more to your subconscious mind to pick up some of those um those little cues those you know little shifts in body movement and and the release and stuff like that and just try and stick strictly on the puck So I think this study had said something about there was actually like like elite level goalies had almost a full second that they were looking at the puck earlier than the non-elite level goalies and um also kind of had more fixation throughout the tracking and then after.
Speaker: Um, and that's something that I, I think is like, it sounds obvious when you, when you talk about it and you lay it out. But I also think it's something that maybe doesn't get enough love or enough you know talk about airtime, I guess. um But it's it's something that I think is interesting to think of too because we put a lot of tendencies into the read the release and stuff like that. And to me, this shows that at the end of the day,
Speaker: it's the puck that we care about and where the puck goes. And we got to kind of stick to the puck and keep our eyes on that puck. um And then ah just a couple other things too to kind of be thinking of. um like with this whole cognitive training approach, um there are a few other things that that we can work on that really helps with with our, um I guess, like our development overall.
Speaker: um So one of those is working memory. um So that's kind of the ability to remember information. um So obviously, you know, the, the,
Speaker: easy I guess test for this or whatever is somebody gives you three numbers like two five four and you're able to repeat that two five four and then you know once you get to um a higher level of that progression now it's okay take what I said to you and repeat it backwards so now it would be okay four five two right those sorts of working memory things are really good because it kind of helps you On the fly, kind of take snapshots and get an idea of where everything is. um Obviously, in the game of hockey, like things are moving rapidly and changing rapidly. So um it may seem like that working memory isn't really important because everything is changing all the time.
Speaker: But there are things that even if you don't realize that your brain kind of stores and sticks with. So like things like who's on the ice? Are they a lefty? Are they a righty? Who's on the ice for your team? Where are your defensemen? What do they like to normally do?
Speaker: What did coach say at intermission that you guys are now doing as a breakout, right? Like those sorts of things can really help if you have a good working memory.
Speaker: And then the other thing too, kind of on the flip side of this is adaptation. So the ability to adapt to new information quickly and be able to process that new information and translate that into an output, that is very important too. so Anything you can do um with any sort of adapting kind of cognitive load is is very good in terms of you being able to do that on the ice. So an example of that is if you're doing some sort of like ball work with a partner. Like they could have colored tennis balls as an example. They throw one to you. Like they start with the balls behind their back. They throw one to you. And each color has a certain output. So you have to catch. And based on the color, you have to do something. So maybe blue is a jump. Maybe red is a squat. And maybe yellow is I don't know, a burpee or a pushup or something like that.
Speaker: Um... And then what you can do is do that for a couple of rounds and then halfway through or, you know, after five throws or whatever, then your partner says, okay, now yellow is bounce the ball back to me after you catch it instead of a pushup. Okay. Now red is jump and blue is squat or whatever I said, but backwards, I can't even remember. I need better working memory. Um, but, uh,
Speaker: Yeah, like any anything like that, that basically works on any part of your cognitive load, your cognitive processing, anything that takes visual information and works through some sort of processing and then from there kind of translate into some sort of output that is very, very transferable to what we do as goalies in the net. And that's why this sort of approach and this sort of addition to your development is very big.
Speaker: ah It can be a game changer, especially when you get to the higher levels and the the margin for error, I guess the difference between athletes is so razor thin.
Speaker: These sorts of just small advantages can really set you so set you apart from others. Um, and you know, it, it kinda, it also, I guess slows the game down. Like we hear that a lot. Like when you're in the zone, the game slows down when you're in the zone, you can anticipate what's going to happen really well. You almost like, I used to call it the sixth sense. You almost knew what was going to happen in a play before it happened.
Speaker: All of that is exposure to patterns and your brain getting used to those patterns and being able to process that information and just kind of almost know what's going to happen or at least have an idea of the most likely scenarios.
Speaker: And that's really a magical thing once that starts to happen. um Because again, as goalies, we really don't have the luxury of time. So the more you can do in that short amount of time, because I mean, realistically,
Speaker: If you think of the and NHL level, some of those shots, the goalies have less than a second to respond to. right And they're actually, in a lot of, i I believe part of the reason why goal or ah goals are going up so much is just because of how good the players are, how good they shoot.
Speaker: and how much they open up in tight for those shots because we're getting to the point now that some of those, it's it's literally, like, it's physically impossible for goalies to pick up that puck. There just isn't enough time for the human brain to actually process that information. um But part of the reason why these guys are so good and can operate at that level is again the the probabilities, the percentages. They get themselves into spots where they are most likely to succeed. And then even
Speaker: even with you know the the short amount of time they have and maybe not even being able to process fully at least if they have an idea of where something might be going you know they can start moving there even if they haven't fully processed what's going to happen yet or or if they haven't fully processed that shot you know, they're in the spot they need to be. They have an idea from, you know, the body language and the release and, you know, those, those sorts of things that provide them with the information. So they have an idea of where the puck's going and then they execute. And that's a lot of times too, why, you
Speaker: at the highest levels and I'm sure you guys have all experienced this but that's also why sometimes those change up shots can be so difficult because you're expecting one thing based off of the information that you were given and a completely other thing happens like if somebody fans on the shot or if it just ticks a stick, like it doesn't even move that much, but because you've already committed to one spot, that couple of inches of difference can you know make the difference between a save and a goal. So um that's why this sort of stuff is important because the better you can process information
Speaker: quicker the better that you're going to be on the ice and and so hopefully this is kind of something to get you guys thinking maybe start going down the rabbit hole of some of this cognitive training like that's something that we're starting to build out as an offering in-house to work with um with their goalies with and that is something that will eventually also be a virtual offering of ours is to help goalies work through the cognitive training So if that is something that interests you, stay tuned um because we are going to be at some point throughout this season rolling out a lot of these different things.
Speaker: services and offerings that we have kind of been trialing on the back end and building on the back end and we're super excited about. um So I'm excited to kind of get that for you guys and have that be an option for you guys as well because I don't think it's something that's talked about enough and I don't think it's something that's worked on enough. So if you guys have the time and the ability to incorporate it into your development, I highly, highly recommend it, especially if you want to get to those higher levels.
Speaker: um This is the sort of stuff that's going to really help you set yourself apart because everybody's working on the ice. Everybody's working on their skating, their tracking, their positioning, all that stuff. Not everybody is working on their cognitive processing. Not everybody is working on their visual um their visual systems.
Speaker: and So that's something that if you guys want a little edge, I would highly encourage you to take the rabbit hole, dive down the cognitive training and start implementing those sorts of things.
Speaker: um As always, guys, thanks for tuning in. That's kind of all I have for today. um If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at goalies at truenorthgoaltending.com. I'd love to kind of chat with goalies and provide some input and some some help if needed. um But yeah, we are basically right on top of camp season here. So again, some of these might be pretty quick hits for the next you know five, six weeks or so. We'll see kind of how how things go. But so as always...
Speaker: Thanks for giving us the support and for tuning in. You can share the show. You can like, you can subscribe. All of that helps us out. um But just the word of mouth, like sharing it, um just telling people that you enjoy the show and that they should check it out. That's a big one to help us out.
Speaker: Um, and then the other thing is you can check us out on social media at true North goaltending. That's for Facebook, Tik TOK, YouTube on Instagram. We are Y E G goalie coach. And, uh, you can check us out at true North goaltending.com for any of our sessions, any of our drills, any of our articles, of that sort of stuff.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, we'll let you go. Thank you guys. We'll, uh, see you guys next week. And in the meantime, make some saves goalies. Take care. Have a good one.
