It is even more important for young goalies to drink enough during practices and games
We have looked at hydration and goaltenders before and noted that it is a particularly important issue to consider because of our gear, and in especially in practices because goalies get relatively less rest than forwards and defencemen during drills.
Paying attention to hydration and to energy requirements is even more important for young goaltenders. Whether you are a young goalie, the parent of one or a coach this is information that you need to pay attention to.
An article by Dr. Oded Bar-Or or McMaster University and the Gatorade Sports Science Institute reviewed the research covering nutrition, hydration and young athletes. If you are a sports science junkie its a great read. If not, here is the key piece of information to consider in your game or your coaching:
Like adults children underestimate their fluid requirements – but their core body temperature increases faster than adults as they become dehydrated. In other words - it is even more important for children to drink during exercise. Ensure kids arrive hydrated and enforce drink breaks.
Taking body weight before and after training will tell you how much fluid is being lost. Our original article outlines how to do this and what to look for.
Children drink more voluntarily when flavouring is added to their water – and even more when they are given a sports drink.
I don’t think every parent needs to provide a litre of gatorade for their kids every practice. You should, however, pay special attention to hydration – a small change will affect performance and presumably, learning the skills of goaltending. You spend lots of money on hockey – from fees to equipment to goalie schools. Ensure you maximize your enjoyment and your performance by paying attention to details like ensuring you drink enough during games and practices.
Goatenders may be affected more than other players
If you watched the World Junior Championships on TV in Canada you would have seen the Gatorade infomercials showing researchers studying sweat loss in the Canadian players and their needs for proper fluid replacement. A group of researchers, supported by Gatorade, were able to join the Team Canada Training Camp for a day and study the hydration of the players before, during and after practice. The infomercials hit home for me because I did my graduate studies in sport science – and I’m also old enough to have played for coaches who thought it was bad to drink even water during a game!
I wanted to see how that research would apply specifically to goaltenders. We’re on the ice longer and we wear far more gear – and of course we all work harder, right? So if players experience significant fluid loss and need to consider how and how much they replace, that must go double for us.
The scientific star of those infomercials is Dr. Lawrence Spriet of the University of Guelph in Ontario. Where else to go, but the source? Dr. Spriet was happy to speak with me for inGoal Magazine and tell us how his research applies specifically to goalies.
The interview was interesting as it touched on many areas beyond the world junior squad. They have had the opportunity to test the Guelph Storm more extensively, even in games. They have also worked with the New York Rangers and Dr. Spriet consults informally with Nashville goaltender Dan Ellis – who once lost 13 pounds due to sweat in a single game!
In advance of our conversation, Dr. Spriet sent me the paper detailing the work they did studying the Canadian Junior Team. It’s a technical document, but makes for an interesting read, nonetheless. There are also specific details for the 4 goalies in camp at the time. A few notes from the paper:
Losing only 1-2% of your body mass can impair performance – that’s as little as 2 pounds for a 200 lb. goalie – less for you fit types!
Players lost on average 1.8 L per hour of fluid – to replace that fluid you would need to drink nearly two large water bottles. And certainly one full bottle to stay within the 1% loss of body mass.
Goalies averaged 2.9L lost in an hour – 3 very large water bottles! The goalies did drink the most – 1.8 L on average – but they still lost on average 1.1% of body mass.
You have to assume that these well-trained young men were taught in their careers about the importance of hydration – yet 1/3 of them still lost more than 1% of their mass.
The players were not able to maintain adequate sodium balance.
The players tended to choose sports drinks before practice and plain water during.
Sodium Balance – Sodium replacement is essential for retaining ingested fluid and restoring fluid balance after exercise
Suggest extra sodium sports drink to help replacement of sodium – drinking water only can be a real problem.
Here are the specific comments about goaltenders. It is interesting to note the extra fluid loss is a particular problem in practices.
Goalies sweat the most, losing 2.9 ± 0.2 Lh–1, and this can be attributed to their constant involvement in the drills during the practice — other players, upon completing a drill, waited for 4 – 5 of their teammates to complete their turns before repeating the drill. This allowed the players a chance to rest while the goalies were generally involved in many or all successive repetitions of each drill. The sweating response would presumably be different in game situations, as goalies are only required to react to game play in their end while other players are continuously active during their shifts. This is supported by a study by Green et al. (1976) that demonstrated much smaller increases in blood lactate for a goalie (n = 1, +153%) than for other players (n = 7, +325% ± 16%) during a game, despite similar fitness levels.
Bottom Line – How Should a Goalie Manage Hydration?
The bottom line is that it is unsure how much this matters for non-elite players. The only way to be sure is to take your bodyweight before and after a game or practice – right before oldtimers, not after that extra hour in the dressing room or local watering hole!
If you are losing more than 1% of your bodyweight you have a potential problem.
Sports drinks have little value before a game, but are exactly what you need during a game – the extra sodium versions.
You need a well balanced meal right after the game – if it will be delayed there are many recovery shake options that are essentially chocolate milk!
Thanks to http://elitegoaltending.wordpress.com/ for this tip:
Of course the reality is that a goalie’s reaction time and reflex movements are completely different beasts. Goaltenders making seemingly impossibly quick saves are doing so on reflex – bypassing the normal systems by which we react. Much like if you were to accidentally touch a hot surface – you can pull your hand away by reflex far faster than reacting – as measured in the ruler experiment at the end of this video.
With the fastest score anyone can get on the ruler test you’ll still not be reacting fast enough to pick up an NHL shot from the top of the circles. Only reflex movements can do that. So try the ruler experiment for fun, but it really doesn’t matter what you score on it. To be a great goalie the key is to train so that you make your saves by reflex, without thought. That’s when you’ll move the fastest.
There is a very good article by Damien Cox in the Toronto Star this morning on Brodeurs’s style. Damien is well worth listening too as he literally wrote the book on Brodeur. His “Beyond the Crease” is a great read on Marty’s career – although it will need a chapter or two added soon!
Cox’s publisher has arranged for us to do an interview with him soon. I am just awaiting final arrangements from Mr. Cox.
From today’s article:
“It is a question that should perplex the hockey industry.
Given that Patrick Roy is given credit for spawning a generation – perhaps two – of butterfly goaltenders who try to play the game just as he did, why has no one tried to copy Martin Brodeur?”
Don Cherry also brought this up on the weekend, in his own unique way, also wondering why not all goalies wear tiny pads as well.
I’m not sure that this perplexes me at all, really. I would think that we don’t teach the Brodeur style for the very same reason that nobody teaches the Hasek style. How do you teach unpredictability and improvisation? Teachers go for the most basic approach that helps the most students. That a few people have mastered the position using a different approach does not mean that we should all adopt a new way of doing things. Study them, yes. Learn pieces of what they do, of course. But a wholesale adoption of the Brodeur way would not necessarily be in order.
Since publishing this post, we have also published another with Gerber photos. See it here.
We’ve a a good deal of traffic from people searching for shots of Martin Gerber’s new Leafs mask. It seems odd that he was happy to wait so long in Ottawa to shed the off the shelf black mask in favour of the very cool Darth Vadar look, and now he dons a new Leaf lid in very short order. Perhaps he’s hoping to stick around beyond the final 20 games of the year?
Here, thanks to “Changing on the Fly”, we have a couple of shots from his first game with the new mask vs. Tampa. Looks like a tribute to the old Mike Palmateer mask, but I’m not sure what is on the other side. If anyone knows, or if you know who the artist was, please send a note or leave a comment.
Update Friday PM: Changing On the Fly sent me a note:
“Hey I just saw the pics on your site. Nice site by the way. Just wanted to answer your queston on what’s on the other side of the mask. I saw in on TV during a game and, if my mind serves me correctly, I’m pretty sure it’s the same tribute mask. Although I’m not completely sure if it’s Mike Palmateer but that was my first guess too when I saw the mask.”
I enjoyed this piece from the show Sport Science looking at Ovechkin shooting on Kolzig and explaining how an NHL goaltender is able to react to a shot so quickly.
To experienced goaltenders the explanation that Kolzig has to use reflexes – not the ‘quick movement’ type most people use when talking about a goalie’s movements, but the kind that involve automatic movements without thought. Movements that bypass the normally slow decision-making process and more akin to the reactions that we make when, for example, touching a burning-hot surface. These are known as somatic reflex arcs.
This oldie also addresses reaction time. It includes a common test used in high school science classes to measure reaction time, but keep in mind that that sort of reaction time is far slower than a reflexive move.
