Podcast Segment for Parents – Episode 260

Very good. Let's slide over to the parent segment brought to you by Stop It Goaltending U, the app. Vision training. And this is an an area that you talk about working on your confidence. Vision training goes beyond just tracking pucks.

Right?

But before we get to that, let me just tell you a little bit about Stop It Goaltending U, the app. We've we've kinda teased you with all the different things that are on there. Let me give you a taste of what's up there this week. They got a new goalie tip with Youngstown Youngstown Phantoms goalie in Saint Lawrence commit call and win on how to play two on ones. So he'll

walk you through that. Is is the the various people that do the tips that that you're not even aware of. And then you get to know them and get to know these these random sorry. I'm sorry for jumping on.

No. And and I think what you're gonna see over the years is that a lot of these kids end up becoming names that you do know.

Yes. A just like a lot

of it was amazing being at the USA Hockey Symposium, the Goalie Symposium, and how many of the coaches that were there presenting that were working with NHL and American League teams and franchises also came up through Stop It Goaltending even before they had the app. So some of these names that are on Stop It Goaltending U the app, I guarantee you, you're gonna see some of them in the future in the show and at higher levels. And you're be like, oh, I remember learning how to play a two on one from a young Colin win, and now he's playing at higher levels. They've also got a new goalie one zero one this past week called the blind bat drill, which is a great way for goalies to work on spatial awareness. Speaking of vision and and vision training, that's on the Stop It Goaltending U app.

And all their summer drills they're doing with goalies are gonna be available under the app drills under drills on the app. First to two sets of drills are already up. So that's just a little taste of what they do on the Stop It Goaltending U app. There's new content pretty much daily. You can dive in and go way down the rabbit hole and get better as a goaltender, or you can just take it in little doses every day.

And I guarantee you either way, you will be better for it.

It's one of the best things to come into my life from a goaltending point of view. What they've what they've done over at Stop It Goal

Tender Media. You get a free subscription to InGoal Magazine, ingoalmag.com, premium membership when you subscribe to Stop It Goaltending U, the app. There's

no reason not to have a membership to InGoal Magazine. There's so many different routes and avenues to it.

There isn't. That's a good point by you. Okay. So vision training. Josh Tucker. You're gonna hear Charlie Lindgren in the feature interview talk about Josh Tucker and his work with him.

So we figured we would tease Josh Tucker is gonna be on the podcast next week from our time in Minnesota. Let's tie it all together by having Josh Tucker answer, what's the first thing I should do as a parent for my young goalie when I wanna focus on improving their vision and doing sports vision training? What's the first thing I gotta do? Josh will tell us.

Get an eye exam now.

Now, folk. You heard that now part, right? That was important, now get an eye exam.

Now I wanna distinguish, you know, school screenings, they'll catch big outliers, you know, team wellness checks. But, I mean, I know I know optometrists who are hired to screen NFL teams. They get sixty seconds a guy. It's not enough time to look at everything. Right?

Where get an optometric eye exam, insurance could should cover it, it should take about twenty minutes. I have had so many people over my years of doing this, you know, for one anecdote, I went to a high high end goalie camp where these are some of the best teenage goalies in the country. I surveyed of 40 of them. I said, not counting school screenings, not counting wellness checks. How many of you have actually been to an eye doctor to get your eyes checked?

Sixteen out of forty raised their hands. Less than half of the highest projected performers. You know? So from the neck down, they've all logged thousands of hours training the rest of their body. They didn't even do the step one most basic thing.

And now and then as the years go by, I I run into these people, coaches, players that they come up to me. Just recently was another one. I was at a camp, this kid came in. He said, hey. You know, I met you two years ago at so and so camp.

And I remembered him, and he said, I went right to the eye doctor when I got back, and I needed contacts. And I said, what do you think? You know, how is it since you wear him? He goes, it's so much better. And it just, you know, I mean, it's so no matter where I speak or present, I start I like to start with that.

So I appreciate you asking, and that's something, you know, telling the world to go do that, that that has no bearing on my business. It's just the right thing to do. It's just, you know, find out. It it would be a huge bummer that your career comes to an end and you find out after you could have just put something in your eye and been better, Just instantly better. So that's step one.

Okay. So go see an optometrist now. Okay. Now that said, like, beyond that too, like, there are other examples that you could give me, like, where and I think, like, there's probably parents listening, they're like, oh, my kid can see fine. He doesn't know he doesn't need glasses, doesn't need to go see the eye doctor.

You've seen it over the years where the parents shocked to find out a kid, whether it's the optometrist or some of the work you do at how the eyes aren't working, or like a kid is having to compensate for a vision problem. And in their eyes though, they don't know there's a problem because that's their normal.

Yes.

They just assume maybe share an example. Because I think there's parents that are like, oh, my kid's fine. Yeah. And you just don't know because they don't say anything to you because they're assuming you're going through the same thing. That's their normal.

That's what they've grown up with.

Right. Right. Yeah. So so how how children perceive the world through their own eyes, that's the only way they've ever seen it. They don't know don't have anything with which to compare it.

So I say, let's say you just grew up in a house, you never left the house, and you had an old, you know, tube television. And you're like, yeah, TV's great. And then finally, you go to a friend's house and he's got 4K HD, and you're like, what? I didn't know it could look like this. So when we find I mean, we've had, and we're not just talking minor things.

I had a 10 year old come in. We I had a 10 year old come in, and within 90 seconds, I knew he was seeing double. And started asking him, you know, would you do you ever see two of the same thing? He goes, oh, yeah. All the time.

And his dad just just floor hit his jaw at the ground, and he just didn't know. And when we have those moments in here, it's it's verbatim. It's the same words in the same order. The parents say, my child never complained about anything, so we didn't think anything was wrong, which I totally understand. But the thing is, kids won't complain or know that something's wrong because they don't know the alternative or how much better it could be.

And so that's why I just say, you know, now a standard eye exam is not going to check all the things that we delve into in our work, but it's really important. It's a starting point. And if you skip it and, you know, you might go in and you're better than twenty twenty, great. But, you know, if you need corrective lenses, get them. Get them.

And so that's why I just say, you know, now a standard eye exam is not going to check all the things that we delve into in our work, but it's really important. It's a starting point. And if you skip it and, you know, you might go in and you're better than twenty twenty, great. But, you know, if you need corrective lenses, get them. Get them.

Just do it. And it's just such a simple quick thing. And, again, going back to the not just the player, but the parents, man. You're you know, one one weekend trip to a tournament is days and hours in this, and it's just, this is a quick visit and, you know, just get the information.

It's fascinating. So just to for people who aren't aware of Josh's background.

True Focus Vision is his company. And it's funny, I see he he's you'll recognize the logo. It's an eyeball with two flexing arms on either side, just like the bicep flex, little Arnold Schwarzenegger with an eyeball in the middle. And I see that logo all the time in National Hockey League locker rooms. Matter of fact, I saw it with Jake Oettinger this year when the Dallas Stars came to town.

There's the bag with all the training tools and all the tips and all the different things that you can do with Josh to train your eyes. We're gonna get into it way more with him next week when he's a featured guest on the podcast. But there is so much you can do to make sure your your vision is operating. And as Josh just said, before you get to any of those steps, the first thing you gotta do is go see an optometrist and just get your eyes tested. So good advice for him.

But then as you move forward is we're gonna hear Charlie talk about there's a lot more you can do so you can see and track pucks better better than you do right now. As a matter of fact, Hutch probably remembers me asking remember we had a conversation about goalies seeing the puck all the way in?

Yes.

And you found it a little odd that I assumed they didn't all the way? Mhmm.

As Woody

can't. Woody can't.

You mentioned that in today's interview, I think.

So we did the test and Woody's eyes diverge exceptionally. Well, not exceptionally, but in a in a in higher level. So I can see the zone really great. But then we did convergence, so how your eyes come together. And I didn't fail.

I probably failed. I was bad. And so that explains why my assumption that goalies don't actually see it all the way in because I can't. Because my eyes don't come together. They lose it at a certain space.

And so it makes sense. It all adds up to me, and now Josh is gonna help me train it so I can.

So is that puck tracking? Is that what we're talking about?

I mean, convergence, I guess. Puck tracking is such an overused term, like, are different aspects of it.

The lines get blurred here to blow Yeah.

So that is following a puck coming at you all the way in. To be able to sort of have the eyes come together as it gets closer to you, your eyes have to both of them to see it, they have to converge. And my convergence scores were terrible, which explains why I know where it's going, but I don't see it get to the final spot. So if there's a tip right in front of me quite often, I'm like, I or like, I mean, like, right in front of me, I don't see that, and I can't figure out what hap like, I often ask to ask the shooters, hey. Did you get a piece of that?

Because I don't actually see it. And the testing sort of proved it.

Are we do we have an age here that we should be pursuing this this avenue, Hutch? Where are you on that?

Well, I think in terms of Josh's suggestion today, I don't think it's ever too young to be getting your eyes tested and and making sure that you've got proper eye health.

Those are his favorite stories. Like, this guy's changed lives with some of the stuff he does. Like, forget the goaltending stuff. He's changed lives with some of the impacts he's had on young kids in terms of being able to correct some of the eye issues that prevent them from doing, you know, things like reading. And you know how that can go.

Like, if you're in school and you can't read, like, you're pretty you're pretty quickly labeled with other problems or other deficiencies. So and the number of times, as Josh said, he sat there with a parent and the kids got a major deficiency and never said a word to the parent because, of course, the kid doesn't know. Know. That's his normal. He doesn't know that everyone else is you know, if if you grew up seeing black and white, you don't know that everyone else sees color because you've never seen it.

You assume everyone else is the same. So I I would suggest that I don't want us to put an age on it, but, you know, it's it's probably never too early.

Yeah. This isn't something that you're getting around to when you get to a higher level of hockey. It's it's life.

No. It's it's eye health. Right?

So Yeah. And and yet, he runs into a lot of kids at higher levels of hockey that turn out to have issues that are addressed with optometrists before they even need the sports vision stuff.

Well, we know of other NHL goalie coaches who as the first thing they do with new new goalies in the organization is take them to have the

right So because they can get to that level and not know they have a deficiency.

I've I've got the bad goalie parent story here on this one, guys. I I took Matthew to have his eyes assessed when he was quite young and there was a part of me that wanted him to do poorly on the tests because I figured he's a pretty good goalie right now. If he's doing poorly on these tests, there's something we can do to help him get even better. If he's if he's already got good eyes, there's nothing else we can do. So that's that was my bad goalie parent.

That's crazy hockey parent.

Yep. That was that was crazy.

See, for me, it's not bad goalie parent. I just realized why I'm or why I'm a bad goalie. It all makes sense now. I can't see.

K. The eye chart the eye chart that that we all look at, is is there one letter that's that gives you guys an issue? With me, it's always the the y. I I can never I'm always guessing. Is it is it a v?

Is it a is it a y? It it confuses me. I an f f.

It's probably me. You know, with me, it's probably an o because it looks like a puck, and clearly, I can't see a puck, especially when it's coming at me. So for all those years that my beer leaguers have been asking me, my teammates have been like, are you blind? I'm like, yeah. When the puck gets close enough, I might as well be.

Yes. How do you not stop that? Yeah.

There's reason. Can't see it. I can't see it, guys. That's the thing. Just another excuse ready to go for Woody. Hey. One of

the things I've really enjoyed about starting these parents, segments, guys, is the parent communication. And I've started to get notes fairly regularly from parents. Parents at ingoalmag.com is how you can get ahold of us about this segment. And one just came to mind this week that I really enjoyed. There were several this week about the segment last week on why we let our kids play goal.

And Jason O'Daniel, shout out to Jason, sent me a note, and he lengthy note about why he has his kid play goal. But one of the ones I just wanted to mention was he began by saying, of course, I let, in quotes, my son, play goal largely because he wanted to and he enjoyed it, something we mentioned first off last week. And then he said, I quote, encourage him to play a net though, and then list all all the great reasons about how it helps you mentally and how challenging it is as a position. And and I those two words stood out to me, guys. I don't think Jason intended it.

I know he didn't because we had some follow-up chats, but I I definitely like the wording encourage far more than let. There's a negative connotation to I let my kid play goal. But it actually was intentional when I used that word last week because we were directing those things towards a parent who doesn't want their kid to play goal. So I am saying here's why you should let them play goal. But maybe I should have phrased it even more positively and said, we should be encouraging all kids to play goal to at least get a an opportunity, something we talked about last week.

So keep them coming. If you have any thoughts on the on the show, folks, if you have any thoughts on the parent segment, if you have any questions that you'd like us to answer, please send me a note. Parents@InGoalmag.com.

I like the way you did the movie trailer voice.

Do you want do you want that back?

I I enjoyed that.

Parents@InGoalmag.com.

Coming next to a theater near you.

I'm I'm trying to apply for a a second job here. Maybe if Will Arnett isn't getting used for all those commercials, I can hop in with my deep theater voice.

This is so good.

Former goaltender himself, Will Arnett.

That's right. We should get him on.

That would be fantastic.

Him and Keanu Reeves. There's a duo. And Steve Carroll.

Right.

And Steve Carroll. That's right. All the smart ones are goalies. All the good ones are goalies.

Makes total sense. Right?

Oh, yeah.