Too much of a good thing is potentially bad for goalies

Goaltenders could learn a great deal from the Chinese philosophy
of yin and yang, where contrary or opposite forces are actually
complementary and interconnected in the natural world.

Hi gang,

Back after a brief sabbatical. Boy, there's nothing quite like serious hip surgery to help an old goalie regain his perspective. So I thought "perspective" would be a good topic to tackle this month.

Far too often, goalies (and young athletes in a variety of different sports) concentrate far too much on their chosen craft. There's a fine line between commitment (a good thing), and going overboard (a bad thing). And if you can't identify and respect where that line is, you risk losing perspective. Here's a column I did on the topic for the New England Hockey Journal. Let me know what you think.

All the best,
-Brion

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Too much of a good thing is potentially bad for goalies

"Get the balance right … "
-Depeche Mode

Almost every summer, I do a column or two on taking advantage of the off-season to work on improving your technique and keeping fit. Or improving your fitness. Because, as the old adage asserts, championships are won in the off-season.

One highly regarded goalie coach I work with delineates his roles between the off-season, when he calls himself a "development coach," and in-season, when he's a "performance coach." Translation? During the season, it's all about results. Just win, baby. The off-season is when he works on the big picture, the goalie's overall game. That's why summer camps are important. You can really push yourself, find out what works, and find out what doesn't, because you have time to assess the results without worrying about whether those results are affecting your team.

In-season is not the time to overhaul your game, or even experiment with new equipment (unless your old stuff is getting you hurt). You can tweak things, like your technique and your fitness level. It's always a good idea to be continuously mindful of what's working and what's not. Self-assessment is a trademark of all good goaltenders.

The same goes for hard work. Most goalies I know – especially the ones with a true competitive streak – will double down on their workouts if they feel their game is slipping. But there are limits.

Sometimes, we lose sight of a very simple, and very profound rule of athletics. You need time off. Your mind, and your body, need a break. The reality is that exhaustion, both mental and physical, can lead to poor performance. In other words, it's perfectly OK to chill from time to time. And that's something that parents, coaches, and even instructors like myself need to keep in mind.

"There's a growing enthusiasm, and a huge market, for training, teaching and supporting young athletes," said Dr. Adam Naylor, director of Telos Sport Psychology Coaching. "Elite sports performance and medicine services are available to all with a credit card, and if a family desires, a passionate and competent coach and advisor can be hired. This may not be a good thing.

"Forget the popular – yet very real – concern that pushing a young athlete toward athletic excellence can lead to burnout, dropout, and even mistreatment or abuse," he said. "Surprisingly, research has shown that encouraging youth to achieve athletic excellence can also lead to young athletes not fulfilling their athletic potential."

According to Naylor, we've become enamored with the works of researchers and authors like Anders Ericsson and Malcolm Gladwell (author of "Outliers") that indicate it takes 10 years and/or 10,000 hours of practice to perfect a certain activity, whether its computer programming, being a musician, or mastering a particular sport. Likewise, research by Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania has studied the value of "grit" in the classroom, and that has been applied to the playing field (or the ice, in the case of hockey).

Grit, according to Duckworth, is the "tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals," while self-control is "the voluntary regulation of behavioral, emotional, and attentional impulses in the presence of momentarily gratifying temptations or diversions." Both, it's safe to say, are considered attributes for a position as demanding as goaltending.

However, both concepts – repetition and grit – can be taken to extremes.

"In both cases, the message is loud and clear: train relentlessly and regularly and greatness is within grasp," said Naylor. "Unfortunately, this is an example of society and sports being deaf to nuance.

"Failure to understand Ericsson's entire conception of deliberate practice can make much athletic striving time ill-spent," he said. "Even if one is fortunate enough to have found excellent coaches and a sufficient number of competitive opportunities, striving toward excellence requires regular rest."

There's the rub. Athletes who push themselves to the breaking point, no matter how well-intentioned that effort is, risk breaking down. This past season, I was working with a freshman goaltender who was a coach's dream. The youngster was an absolute sponge when we talked about the technical aspects of the position, and he worked his tail off when we applied those lessons on the ice.

Then, one day, Andy (not his real name) was really dragging. He had no "pop" to his movements, and was continually dropping too quickly, instead of waiting on the shot. Once he dropped, he stayed down. So I asked him what was going on.

"I'm exhausted, coach," he said. "I did a leg workout after practice yesterday, and the day before. Today, I've got nothing."

"Well, d'uh," I replied. "You can't just keep running yourself into the ground, Andy. You've got to make sure you give yourself a chance to recover."

My response was almost a knee-jerk reaction, and had more to do with my prior life as an amateur mountain bike racer than my current role as a goalie coach. In my 30s, urged on by a few cycling pals, I started competing in mountain bike races. I wasn't ever very good, but I still wanted to get better. So I started training like a maniac, burying myself in these brutal training sessions day after day. Not exactly a scientific regimen.

Instead, I subscribed to the "No pain, no gain" theory so prevalent in the 1990s. If a one-hour training session was good, a 90-minute session was better. And, come the weekend, at the starting line, I had … nothing. Just like my freshman goaltender, I was toast. It didn't mean I couldn't race, but it was a slog.

So I started doing my homework, including long talks with my racing friends who had far more experience. The first thing they taught me was the "recovery ride." On Mondays and Tuesdays, especially post-race weekend, the gang would go out and soft pedal, spinning an easy gear just to encourage blood flow. We maintain a "conversational" pace, and never pushed our heart rates.

By mid-week, my legs had that "snap" that cyclist's love. I could push hard on Wednesday and Thursday, and then taper briefly on Friday. Then, come Saturday and Sunday, I had the lungs and legs to compete. Not that I was any threat to the top racers in the pack, but I could bring my best. Even better, I was having fun. Which is exactly what Naylor believes is a critical byproduct of rest.

"Physical and mental breaks during practice sessions, throughout seasons, and over the course of the year are necessary for an athlete to rebuild and return to play stronger and stronger," said Naylor.

"Hours of practice and participation in hyper-focused sports environments can saddle athletes with unnecessary expectations, where mistakes on the playing field are failures and stumbles feel like letting coaches and families down," said Naylor. "At the end of the day, sports is 'play.' When adults enthusiastically provide these opportunities but remove 'play' from the equation, something is amiss."

I couldn’t agree more.

FINIS

Getting the balance right for young goaltenders

Not exactly the kind of balance I had in mind, but
pretty impressive nonetheless.

Hi gang,

Hope this finds you all enjoying a successful season. The midway point of the season is always a good time for me to reflect about why I coach. This season, that idea really hit home, since I just got back on the ice this month after hip revision surgery last September.

It was a long and sobering four-month recovery period, and I found myself counting my blessings that I still have the opportunity, and the privilege, to coach. Which brought me to this column, which I originally wrote for the New England Hockey Journal. It really gets to the heart of coaching, at least how I like to practice it. Let me know what you think ...

Getting the balance right for young goaltenders

Sometimes writers choose their column topics, and sometimes the topic chooses the writer. Maybe it's an editor who "suggests" a particular theme (to which the best responses are typically, "That's a great idea," or "I quit"). Other times, it's simply circumstance. This is one of those times.

In the past week, I had two young goalies who were reduced to tears during clinics, not because they got hurt, but because they were embarrassed, overwhelmed, or simply distraught. I'm not sure which, because I never found out what was upsetting them. As most parents can attest, when a child decides to clam up, it's all but impossible to break down that wall. Plus, I had to think of the other kids in those sessions, and it wouldn't be fair to them to allow one child to distract me from the task at hand.

However, both boys reminded me of another situation, last spring, when I watched a young goaltender sobbing uncontrollably after his Pee-Wee team was eliminated from a post-season tournament. Then, this week, I got an email from a concerned mom with a son who was struggling with the emotional demands of the position. She talked about how her son "loves playing goal, but when it comes to being scored on, his emotions take the best of him and he has (and does) cry in the net."

"(Johnny) likes to be a leader and is very confident in himself and outgoing, but he does have quite the temper at times and gets down on himself pretty bad when he lets a puck come through and is scored on," wrote the mom.

Her son, it should be noted, is a Squirt, which means he is only 9 or 10 years old. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Normally, I'd simply tell his mom to remind her son that it's just a game, and not to take it too seriously. But then I thought of my own teary-eyed students (ages 7 and 9, respectively), and the inconsolable Pee-Wee goalie (who was 13). All were feeling a very real stress that they weren't able to deal with. Those events, combined, convinced me that I needed to give the subject more thought, and write about it.

If you spend enough time in a rink, it's easy to forget how young and impressionable these little netminders really are. It happens to me, and I work every week with "kids" from 6 to 56. We all have to be mindful – vigilant, actually – about the emotional well-being of the children we coach.

Of course, that doesn't mean pampering them, and therein lies the quandary for many coaches. We need to find the right balance, even if that balance point is something of a moving target. Every child, and every team, is different. Just like there's no "one size fits all" way to play goal, there's certainly no universal approach to coaching youngsters. They all bring their own set of characteristics, at different ages, and sometimes that includes some emotional baggage. We often don't know much about their home life, or their school day, or even their after-school activities with friends.

Therefore, it behooves us to be flexible, and keep an open mind when any of the kids appear to be off their game. So, here are a few thoughts to remember, primarily for coaches, but for parents as well.

In my goalie clinics, I always remind my shooters to keep their shots "age appropriate." The same goes for coaching. The younger the goaltender, the more important it is to keep the mood light. Again, hockey is a game, and we can't lose sight of that. Coaches can have expectations, but one of those is to make the game enjoyable.

During my first year coaching a local Squirt team, my assistant coach asked: "So, what are your expectations for the season?" My reply – "I want to make sure every child has so much fun that they want to play next year." – was clearly a bit too abstract. He wanted to work on our forecheck and transition game, which was fine. I let him handle the X's and O's of our practice and game planning. Meanwhile, I was the mood czar, pushing kids when I thought they could handle it, and backing off when they needed a softer touch.

Coaches, engage your parents. Parents, engage the coaches. It's critical to have everyone on the same page. That's doesn't mean you'll always agree. I recently had a post-clinic chat with a parent who didn't like my approach. He wanted more repetition, less instruction. I calmly explained my rationale, and why it was crucial for me to set the agenda, not his son. I also reminded him that repetition without proper technique often leads to bad habits.

The distinction, of course, was this was a private lesson, and the father could opt not to have his son participate. A team setting is a bit trickier. Still, the more coaches and parents know about each other's expectations, the better prepared they are to handle the bumps in the road that inevitably crop up.

Be firm, but be fair. It's perfectly acceptable to set goals, and have structure. Structure breeds efficiency. But don't be a slave to it. When you're on the ice, it's OK to say "Let's get to work." I've always told my players that winning makes the game a lot more fun, and hard work greatly improves your chances of winning.

That said, it's just as important to maintain perspective. Be aware. If a child is upset, it's your responsibility (as a coach) to at least try to figure out why. If you can't, give the child a break from the action to settle down, and follow up afterward with the parents. There may be external issues that you don't know about, or have no control over, but will help you gain a better understanding of the situation.

Don't single out the goaltender. Ever. Even if your young netminder is solely responsible for a bad outing (an extremely rare occurrence, by the way), there is little benefit from publicly chastising the kid. Don't let parents, or the other kids, do it either. There are usually hundreds of "mistakes" made during the game that either go unnoticed, or don't lead directly to goals. The difference for goaltenders is that their mishaps often wind up on the scoreboard. That's a tremendous amount of pressure, especially for a youngster who hasn't developed the requisite emotional maturity.

During a game, there's never a good time for the goalie to lose his or her cool. We have an adage in coaching circles: "You never want one bad goal to lead to another bad goal." As a coach, encourage your goaltender to focus on the next shot. Once a goal is behind him, he has to let it go. There's nothing he can do about it. If the child loses his temper, he's far more likely to let in another bad goal. Goalies, even young goalies, need to learn early that an even temperament is best. A temper tantrum works against him, and against his team. That lesson has to be a mantra, repeated over and over again. Be consistent.

Finally, be positive. We're in the growth business. We want our kids to improve. Routinely, one of my favorite moments during a goalie clinic is when I tell a child, "I don't care how many goals you give up here. I don't choose your team, or who the starting goalie is. I just want to see you get better." The relief that typically follows is often cathartic, and it's not surprising to see the same youngster play much better once he (or she) relaxes. It's the ultimate win-win. A happy, relaxed goalie, playing well. What could be better?

FINIS