As goalies, we often focus a lot of attention on the physical things like improving our technique, our strength and our flexibility. However, we may be missing out on a “not-so-obvious” playing advantage.

It has previously been reported that a revolutionary technique has helped Devan Dubnyk turn his career around. It is not the result of some radical style alterations, but rather he has apparently adjusted how he tracks the puck.

The technique is called Head Trajectory and was developed Lyle Mast, who founded OR (Optimum Reaction) Sports, and introduced to Dubnyk by former NHL goalie Stephen Valiquette

According to Valiquette, “Working with goalies on this, if they can understand it and apply it, it’s the biggest game-changer we are going to see in goal-tending, maybe ever. Maybe this is bigger than the butterfly. It will revolutionize and evolve goal-tending.”

According to the OR Sports web site, Head Trajectory is not simply the re-invention of puck-tracking but training that is primarily focused on maintaining the head-on-puck relationship. The program emphasizes the importance of head rotation to provide better vision. And calls for subtle changes in body positioning in order to allow for Optimum Reaction.

OR Sports describes Head Trajectory as “establishing or maintaining proper ‘visual attachment’ on the puck while maintaining the ability to move”. And says that it is this quality that defines top performers and not style, athleticism, size or technical ability.

For the moment, we do not know the exact details of the Head Trajectory technique or how it is taught,. However, we can learn some important lessons from sports research about head eye and head position that also pertains to hockey goal-tending. I propose that the research related to head trajectory is not new, but how it can be applied to goal-tending is.

The Quiet Eye

eyemove
Source: giphy.com

The quiet eye (QE) is a term first proposed by Professor Joan Vickers of Calgary University.  In 2007, graduate student Derek Panchuk and Professor Vickers, completed the most comprehensive1, on-ice hockey study to determine where elite goalies focus their eyes in order to make a save.

They determined that these goaltenders gaze directly on the puck and shooters stick almost a full second before the shot is released. When they do that they make the save over 75 per cent of the time. You may think looking at the puck seems fairly obvious, but the study found that novice goaltenders, with much lower save percentages, scatter their gaze all over the place.

Vickers describes the Quiet Eye as a critical moment that occurs in every sport– the moment where the eyes must receive and the brain must process the last piece of visual information before you perform the final critical movement such as making a save. Vickers suggested that, with the proper training, this information could be immediately incorporated into a goalie’s game, even the game of an elite goalie.

Theories as to why the QE is so effective, appears to be base around having increased processing time.  When more time is taken to view the puck before initiating a movement more relevant information can be processed sub-consciously about the puck and what is required to catch or stop it.

What is critical is the movement of the eye and head — in other words, the gaze — as a unit. This is also known as “neural coupling”.

Learning from Other Sports

There has been a lot of research around the importance of eye and head movement that we can learn from.  Other sports, primarily baseball, basketball and tennis, table tennis, golf and cricket, can teach us a lot.

Based on a study by Nicklaus F. Fogt,  and Aaron B., Zimmerman of The Ohio State University College of Optometry, head movements play a surprisingly important role in tracking pitches. Fogt and Zimmerman designed an experimental setup to monitor eye and head tracking movements in a group collegiate baseball players. The players tracked, but did not swing at, a large number of balls. Eye and head movements were synchronized with trajectory of the pitches. Long story short… the study concluded that most of the time the ball was in the air, the players tracked it with their head — they moved their eyes very little until late in the pitch trajectory.

Pitches took approximately 400 milliseconds to complete their trajectory; the players did not move their eyes until between 340 and 380 milliseconds. Although head movements varied between players, they seemed to follow a common strategy of “neural coupling” between eye and head movements.

In a 2007 study by Damien Lafont  investigated the role of the eyes and head position while playing tennis. He pointed out that observations of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal suggested that elite players follow a typical and probably optimal visual control process. Elites differ significantly from near elites in having a fixation of long duration on the contact zone until the end of the follow through. It should come as no surprise that the study found significant differences for head and eye-head stabilization during the hitting sequence among professional tennis players and specifically a close relationship between head/eye stabilization.

A study by Ripoll and Fleurance in 1988, concluded that for eye-head stabilization to occur, the visual angle was also important. In other words, the angle of your head and your gaze in relationship to the trajectory of the puck is important (probably why Lyle Mast named it so).

Another study entitles; The Head Tracks and Gaze Predicts: How the World’s Best Batters Hit a Ball; study elite cricket players. The concluded many of the same points as the other researcher, that being that the head and eye position was important but they also concluded that the elite batters closely aligned their head with the location of the ball, whereas the club-level batters more closely aligned their eyes with the ball. The elite batters coordinated their eyes and head in a fashion that minimized the discrepancy between the direction of the ball and head.

To better understand this concept, think of one of those head lamps attached to the forehead of a batter. With tight head-ball coupling, the light would shine on the ball from the moment of release through to, or very close to, the moment of bat-ball contact. In contrast, the light-beam from a batter with poor head-ball coupling would not remain on the ball. Importantly, this head movement means that the ball would have remained close to center of vision for the elite batters, if they simply kept their eyes still and only moved their head.

headlamp

Research Summary

So based on all of this research, lets summarized what we know as it would related to goal tending:

Head Positioning Principles”

  1. The head-on-puck relationship is critical.
  2. Head rotation provides better puck vision (don’t move just the eyes).
  3. A quiet eye must be established by gazing directly on the puck and shooter’s stick.
  4. The gaze happens almost a full second before the shot is released.
  5. It is critical that the eyes and head move as a unit – “neural coupling”.
  6. The puck should be tracked with head (head lamp)
  7. Eyes don’t move until very late in the puck trajectory
  8. The angle of your head and your gaze is important
  9. The angle of your head and your gaze should match the trajectory of the puck
  10. Proper head movement means that the puck remains close to center of your vision

Ok, so that easy right? Only 10 things to do! So now you may be starting to understand why this is so difficult to learn. It is not as dramatic as say a butterfly slide. It’s much more subtle and it involves a significant behavior change in the way you move your head and focus on the puck. But make no mistake about it, this change can make the difference between being an elite goaltender or not.

At this point most of you are saying “so what do I have to do?” or “isn’t this just as simple as looking at the puck?” It is not that simple because many of the ways you have been taught to move as a goaltender are in direct opposition to establishing proper head positioning and eye focus. Achieving proper head attachment to the puck in a game situation becomes an even more difficult task considering the anxiety, stress and distractions a goaltender faces. The temptation to move your gaze off the puck can be tremendous and to achieve consistent success in this area like and other requires training and practice. Next question…what can you do to incorporate this knowledge into your game.

Lets take a look at Head Positioning Strategies next…

 

References

  1. Vickers, J. N. (1992). Gaze control in putting.Perception, 21, 117-132.
  2. Vickers, J. N. (1996). Visual Control When Aiming at a Far Target.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 22(2), 342-354.
  3. Vickers, J. N. (2007).Perception, Cognition and Decicion Making: The Quiet Eye in Action. Champaign: IL: Human Kinetics.
  4. Quiet Eye Training Facilitates Competitive Putting Performance in Elite Golfers. Frontiers in Psychology. 2011; 2: 8. Samuel J. Vine,1 Lee J. Moore,1 and Mark R. Wilson1,*
  5. Nicklaus F. Fogt, Aaron B. Zimmerman. A Method to Monitor Eye and Head Tracking Movements in College Baseball Players. Optometry and Vision Science, 2014
  6. GAZE CONTROL DURING THE HITTING PHASE IN TENNIS; Damien Lafont A.S. Montferrand Tennis, Ligue d’ Auvergne de Tennis, France
  7. What does keeping one’s eye on the ball mean? Ripoll and Fleurance, 1988
  8. The Head Tracks and Gaze Predicts: How the World’s Best Batters Hit a Ball;  David L. Mann , Wayne Spratford, Bruce Abernethy
  9. Quiet Eye Training: Effects on Learning and Performance Under Pressure Samuel J. Vine; Mark R. Wilson; University of Exeter