Goalkeeping Ability Comes Down To Your Fingers?

Able to leap tall defenders in a single bound? Check.  Super human cat-like reflexes to dive for, and save any ball with ease? Got that too. So how do you do it? "It’s all in my fingers"! Huh? A recent study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine has indicated that the difference in ratios between the index and ring finger of women athletes can dictate how athletically inclined some women may be. Now I’ve heard it all, but definitely food for thought. Here are some findings from the study:

"Researchers at St. Thomas’ Hospital say their study results suggest that a low second/fourth ratio is related to increased female sports ability.

The researchers base their findings on X-rays of the right and left hands of 607 female twins whose average age was 53.

The second/fourth finger ratio was calculated by dividing the length of the index — second — finger by that of the ring finger.

Study participants were also asked to rank their highest achievement in a wide range of individual and team sports since the age of 11. Participation levels were highest for swimming, cycling, tennis and running in descending order.

The researchers said that the second/fourth finger ratio is a predictor of potential sports ability, with men tending to have a lower ratio, according to the study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine."

I don’t see how effective the above study could be, especially from a goalkeeping perspective. How valid can a study based on x-rays of middle aged twins’ fingers be? I believe that a good measure of goalkeeping ability based on the above study would be to gather groups of middle-aged goalkeepers and measure their ability through the level of their sporting achievements…doesn’t make sense does it? It’s funny what scientists do if they have a lot of time on their hands. I believe that a measure of goalkeeping ability is in how hard you train, and how much guts and determination you have to get to the best of your ability.

On the other side of the coin, the study could be pointing at an interesting trend in genetic potential that may have previously been unrecorded by scientists. The article certainly could be pointing to genetic permutations that are inherent in athletes as opposed to sedentary populations? Just like measuring an athletes somatotype to gauge genetic structure, maybe getting everyone to give sports scientists the finger, could help measure goalkeeping ability. Also, (and again no pun intended), it seems that girls can now give us guys the finger when it comes to genetic potential in soccer too!  

The Tale Of The Black Spider..A Video Tribute To Lev Yashin

The best goalkeeper of his time? Some may debate it. But to receive the highest goalkeeping accolades in the World Cup, a goalkeeper must be handed the Lev Yashin Award from FIFA, testament to the legend of Yashin and his amazing abilities. From 1949 to 1971 he played for one club, Dynamo Moscow. During his playing career he blocked 150 penalties…no goalkeeper has matched this feat to date (not that I know of anyway). When asked to give insight into his awesome penalty-blocking prowess he suggested "to have a smoke to calm your nerves, then toss back a strong drink to tone your muscles"…not the best way to enhance performance, but he must have done something right! Following is a video of Lev Yashin and his remarkable goalkeeping ability:

 

To read up more regarding Lev Yashin and his phenomenal goalkeeping ability check this Wikipedia link.

Muscles & Endurance Don’t Mix

With the pre-season nigh, especially down-under many young soccer stars are beginning the shuffle toward increased fitness. Before you begin running 14 km’s and lifting a dead horse with your bare mitts…slow down and listen to some words of wisdom. Strength training and endurance training at high intensities don’t mix. In fact, if you want to say goodbye to your pre-season training faster than a sushi chef to sashimi, then be careful not to tax yourself into over-training blues. The following excerpts give an insight into what I mean:

"You wouldn’t want to have a heavy lifting day after running 10 miles" on the same day, says William Kraemer, a professor of kinesiology, physiology and neurobiology at the University of Connecticut. That’s because your body is busy restoring energy, rebuilding damaged tissue and recovering hormones exhausted during the first exercise bout.

After hard activity, "your body wants to say, ‘We’re in repair mode,’ " Kraemer says. If you jump to another demanding task while your system is busy synthesizing protein to repair stressed muscles, the body goes back into metabolic mode, which interrupts the recovery. "You want to be fully metabolically and neurologically capable for the big stuff. Whatever (activity) you do first will have the highest quality," he says.

Soccer Development Chaos: What Australians Can Learn From The US

It seems the US has something over us Aussies when it comes to development of their young athletes. Actually I witnessed the power of great organization, phenomenal sporting spirit and culture that encompasses most US sporting institutions. The same can be said about most Australian "football" codes…except for the one that is actually played with the foot and a round ball! Following is a fascinating article about why our youth soccer players are struggling to develop into professionals at home.

"However, youth soccer in this area isn’t exactly the perfect model for export.

Locally we’ve seen detrimental incidents, including allegations of coaches offering players B-12 supplements, embezzlement, ruthless recruiting tactics and personal coaching glory placed ahead of individual player development.

No Time For Goalkeeper Training? Interval Training Can Pay In Spades!

You have no time to train huh? Excuses run rampant when we are short on time, but then again who isn’t running against the clock these days. We live in a society where work comes first…play comes second. Isn’t that a sad state of mind? So what if we played reverse psychology for moment and made your play time first up on your daily "to-do" list. The benefit of increasing your fitness will pay off in spades if you can use a little bit of time management and and get your training out of the way first thing in the morning? "Oh, but it takes too long to train, and I have to go to work on time, and…etc…yawn". Rise and shine lady’s and lads, let me show you why interval training is the shortest and sweetest way to a lean, mean goalkeeper machine!

A new study in the Journal of Physiology showed that short bursts of intense training can produce the same results as traditional endurance training, and it only takes minutes. "Yeah but I heard all this stuff at 2 AM on an ab-buster infomercial". Listen to what the lab-rats have to say:

"The new study was conducted on 16 college-aged students who performed six training sessions over two weeks. Eight subjects performed between four and six 30-second bursts of "all out" cycling separated by 4 minutes of recovery during each training session. The other eight subjects performed 90-120 minutes of continuous moderate-intensity cycling each day. Total training time commitment including recovery was 2.5 hours in the sprint group, whereas the endurance group performed 10.5 hours of total exercise over two weeks. Despite the marked difference in training volume, both groups showed similar improvements in exercise performance and muscle parameters associated with fatigue resistance."

The above can be extended to many forms of exercise, even your goalkeeping training. I have always been a strong advocate for goalkeepers to train short and sharp. Remember the law of specificity? You can’t even spell it right? Well specificity means (very broadly and loosely) that we must aim at looking at specific exercises for specific sports to maximize performance. Goalkeeper’s don’t run miles per match. The nature of goalkeeping is short, intense bursts of speed, agility and strength, followed by periods of rest. Therefore, plan your goalkeeping sessions with interval training in mind. Interval exercises are short and intense, they don’t take long, and you can get the same benefit out of a few minutes of training as you would doing long endurance type exercise.

Saving Penalties: An Artform Or Is It A Science?

Some people call the penalty shoot-out an art, some call it a science. Whatever you think, I can tell you that penalty situations can be nerve racking and extremely taxing on the mind for the goalkeeper. One thing that I have noticed is that top level goalkeepers are extremely cool in this situation. Having your head screwed on properly goes a long way in helping you settle and focus on the penalty situation. Many posts back I blogged about the BBC guide to goalkeeping as being a little disappointing. I stumbled across a cool little game on the BBC site that you may enjoy playing.

The site poses the question whether penalty taking is an art or science:

"It’s not only unfair decisions by referees that can turn the enjoyment of a football match into a painful experience. Watching penalties can be equally nerve-racking.

Some goalies are better than others at predicting which way a striker will shoot. Research by UK scientists has suggested that the best clues come from the direction the striker’s hips are facing as they approach the ball. Another vital clue is the position of the non-kicking foot."

Check out the game here. Have fun! 

 

 

Big Fat Conundrum

I was researching some scientific journals the other night, when I stumbled across what I like to call the "Big Fat Reality". Obesity is an epidemic, and funnily enough we face it in most developed Western countries, most notably Australia and the US. That’s right, both nations hold major sporting clout (more recently the Socceroos adventure at the World Cup 2006), though both face the conundrum that is obesity. How do two nations that are so ingrained with their sporting history not transcend these same values to more sedentary populations? Shouldn’t sport (especially soccer) be an outlet to better health? Sometimes I don’t see it that way.

My recent journey to the States also made me think about the portions of food some Western countries eat. Endless cups of whatever drink you want, huge servings of food, and the major push for fitness all rolled up together. The latter certainly does not fit in with the former? Certainly in San Francisco I saw that they had a healthy selection of food from a variety of fantastic cuisine from around the world. I did not see too much McDonald’s and that is a good thing. Even as a competitive goalkeeper you need to eat clean, especially when you are training at high intensity. The old adage of what you put in is what you will get out certainly rings true for a goalkeeper.

So my advice is that we teach our children training to be the best goalkeepers they can be, that eating to be full is not wise. Eating smaller meals throughout the day is healthy, drinking plenty of fluid is also pivotal…and that does not include drinking tonnes of sugary stuff either, I’m talking about water here. Lean cuts of meat, plenty of fruits and vegetables fuel goalkeeping performance. Don’t let our children become statistics, let’s think about how we can make our young goalkeepers perform the best they can throughout their lives. Obesity is a reality, let’s educate our kids on how to maximize performance with good nutrition, diet and proper guidance with their fitness regime.

So What’s Your Excuse? Maintain Fitness Even When Injured

I was on the way back home from work today thinking about the past year and my eventual return to goalkeeper training (which should be in the next few weeks). More to the point, I was thinking about excuses we make for not getting back into training, or why we don’t continually pursue our fitness so that we maintain peak performance, even when injured. Goalkeeping is extremely demanding, and if we think that a couple of weeks away from exercise because of injury is going to be ok, then think again. Are you serious John…train while injured? Read on to see what I mean.

One lesson I learnt from my recent injury is that training (especially strength training) helps not only to keep our muscles primed in peak condition, but is also a vital means to rehabilitate and recuperate from injury. I don’t mean racking up 100 pounds of weight and going for glory, I mean utilizing resistance training to recuperate from injury, there is a huge difference. There are many forms of resistance training to utilize so that you recuperate from injury these include:

• Running or swimming in the pool
• Utilizing resistance bands
• Utilizing water weights
• Using the stationary bike
• Utilizing the fit ball for a a myriad of different exercises (squats against the wall, crunches etc…)

Catch my drift? So there are really no excuses for not staying in peak fitness while injured. In fact, any physiotherapist will prescribe the above exercises for you depending on whatever you may be suffering. Another thing crossed my mind. I was watching "Ripley’s Believe It Or Not" with the Mrs. the other night and there was a fascinating story about a brilliant Para-Olympian who was given the challenge to climb the stairs of the largest free standing building in the world…on his wheelchair. Guess what? He did it! So what excuse do any of us really have to not maintain our fitness? Think about it.

Never…Ever, Put A Goalkeeper On The Field?

You have to love the blunders that some of us goalkeepers can make. Well, better that they are made in practice so that you learn from your mistakes, rather than during a match where you are getting paid to play. Pepe Reina had a little bit of a blunder mid-week against Everton (it happens to all of us at one time). I’m a Liverpool FC fan, have been since the big hair days of Craig Johnston, the infamous moustache of Ian Wright, and the big man himself John Barnes. It seems that Liverpool also have a penchant for over the top goalkeepers like Grobbelaar and to some extent Dudek. Recently I stumbled across a cool You Tube video of Reina in action against Kaiserslautern (must have been a friendly), where Reina played on the park…hilarious stuff, and you know what they say about goalkeepers playing out in the field…they just don’t mix. Take a look for yourself, even the trainers had a laugh and so did Reina.

Who’s That Goalkeeping Girl?

For anyone who is a Keeper Skool Platinum email subscriber, you get the unique opportunity to add your pics or videos to the Keeper Skool blog. So, if you have not already subscribed, now is a great time to strut your stuff to the wider Keeper Skool community. Well I just got back in from San Francisco and had the wonderful opportunity to see that one of our members (I don’t know who?) sent some very cool pics of her in the midst of some serious goalkeeping action. Check out these super cool photos from our unknown goalkeeping goddess!

What a vivid picture! It looks like some very good positioning here, and something that I believe is absolutely awesome…what looks like forward momentum! See how in the picture the body and right plant foot are pressing forward, that is super cool technique right there. But wait, there is more…

Who took these awesome photo’s? Again a fantastic action shot, with our mystery woman again putting on her game face. Very cool under pressure by the looks of it. To our mystery uploader, thanks so much for sharing your awesome goalkeeping snaps with the greater Keeper Skool community! Keeper up the great work!

PS…For all our Keeper Skool Platinum Blog subcribers next time, please read the regulations I stipulate carefully, and mention something about yourself and where you are from.

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