Any goalies get sore knees?

How’s the week going?  I am back in the swing of things in the gym after a great vacation.  I cannot believe that the NHL regular season is almost over and that my summer hockey training will be revving back up in less than one month!  Today I wanted to give you goalies some info about patellofemoral pain syndrome.  Sounds bad, doesn’t it?  The lucky thing is that it is not as fatal as it sounds and it is pretty common for hockey goalies to experience this injury or soreness during the season or during their off-season training.  Check out the video below to know what it is, how it occurs and the simple steps you can take today to make it better.

Sorry for a pretty long video, but I want you to understand what causes it so you can see how these off-ice exercises can help you get past the pain and back to goaltending.  If you are wondering how many of each exercise to do – here you go…

  • Hold all of the stretches for 30-50 seconds and do them twice per day
  • Start with 10 reps of the Clamshell exercise.  Pause for three seconds at the top of the movement.  Work your way up to 20 reps on each side.  Start these every other day.
  • For the squat with abduction, start by taking 5 seconds to lower into the squat and 5 seconds to stand out of the squat.  Start with 5 reps and build up to 15.  Start these every other day.
  • Split squat with perfect alignment should take 3 seconds to lower into the squat and 3 seconds to come back up.  Try 10 on each leg.  Start these every other day.

Happy training gang.
Cheers,
Maria