One of the most frustrating things I see – – and have seen dating back over 15-years to my time working as the exercise specialist at the Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic- – is the lack of regard that you goalies have for your hips.
You will wait until they bark and bark at you for months (or start biting you) before you give them any regard.
If you had a sore tooth when you chewed on your left side, would you just suffer with it for months or just chew on your right side from now on?
No, you would look after it right away.
You will also wish you had done the things your dentist has been telling you to do all along – – floss more, get regular check-ups and make sure you brush at least twice per day. Even when you do all that, you can still get a toothache, but the chances are dramatically reduced.
The same goes for your hip training. Injuries can still happen, but you can reduce your risk or at least reduce the magnitude when the injury bug bites.
Case in point…
Got an email from a goalie who could not make progress doing the free Butterfly Challenge. He had been following the program, but certain stretches were a little uncomfortable in his hip and he was not seeing any improvement over time.
I gave him this advice…’go get a good sport physio or sport med doctor to assess your hips, you should not be feeling joint discomfort when you stretch’.
And the outcome of that appointment… bilateral femoroacetabular impingement. Not good.
Now imagine if he had tried to keep forcing his stretches, smashing into his butterfly on the ice and basically accelerating the wear and tear on his hip until the pain and dysfunction became unbearable.
I wish when he got it assessed there was another reason for his symptoms – – there often is another reason and some treatment can get rid of the pain, improve the function and have you out on the ice moving better than you have in years – you may have even forgotten how you used to move and how good it felt.
You will be stopping more pucks, making second effort saves on your rebounds (yeah, I know you put out a juicy rebound from time to time) and having a great time out there.
So there is the lecture about what to do when something doesn’t feel right in your hips or there are positions that you just cannot get into.
I go into a little more detail about it in this video…and in a day or two I will hit you with a new ‘rotator cuff’ drill for your hips that you will definitely want to try because not only will it strengthen your hip, it will also show if you are lacking mobility in this movement.
Cheers,
M
PS – I’ll be back with a couple new ways to help your hip mobility later in the week.