I played GK about a year ago. Some guy decided to do a preety powerful shot at like 20 yards away. I defended it. 5 minutes later a ambulance is carrying me to the ER cause of 2 fractured bones at my wrist, and i had to wear a cast for a month.
Now i watch some matches of football, with GK’s defending shots from like half a meter away going at like 80km/h with absolutely no harm or anything.
I get adrenaline is a big painkiller and i’m not the most in-shape guy, while they are athlethes, but you’re telling me a shot from 20 yards broke my hand and yet a shot from 10 centimeters has no efect on them?
In: 531
I always remember Kevin Keegan of England talking about goal keepers gloves. He said that for their goal keeper that all he did was fish the ball out of the back of the net eith them.
I was taught that if a shot was too hard to catch, deflect it using my lower palms if I was diving/ reaching or bringing my arms together and using the sides of my fists of it was gonna hit me in the face. Basically, the same techniques for not giving up easy rebounds also use the strongest and most stable parts of your hands.
A shot has to be pretty awkwardly angled for a fluke injury like that.
There are many reasons they don’t break their wrists very often, from conditioning over the years and years of training, many keepers tape their wrist and use techniques catching the shots higher up on the palm to avoid taking the hit straight onto the heel of the palm. And gloves take a bit of the initial force as well, but not that much to be honest.
But the biggest thing is definitely technique, small things adding up to a safe shot stoppage, cupped hands, higher impact placement on the palm, slightly bent wrists to defuse the force angle of the shot.
There are quite a few videos on YouTube that covers goalkeeping catching techniques, and you can kind of get how they help with safety when you look at how they move and catch.
With all of this said, some do still actually break their wrists, seasoned goalkeepers.
And I have broken the wrist of two of my goalies back when I played (I did have a pretty mean shot to be fair) and they were both 10-15 maybe 20 years into goalkeeping at that time.
So luck also has an influence, all it takes is a bad catch and you get injured, same as in every sport, losing focus for a second could spell broken bones
A common tactic is to deflect the ball with a fist instead of an open palm, or using the balls of your palm rather than the fingers. That’s in the case they use their outstretched hands. It’s also important that they’re trying to deflect it, not stop it, so holding their hands at an angle can deflect the ball without transferring all its force to them. If they want to catch it they may use their chest or abdomen to help dissipate the force.
It may also be that their bones have gotten stronger from continuous play since they were kids. Certainly bone density in other areas responds to repeated stress and impact. You don’t have that history of constant stress on your forearms
You were unlucky to face a hard shot before you were experienced enough to handle it. I prided myself on being able to handle any shot. I would never deflect something away just because it was hard. The ball was my lover, not my enemy. Any ball directed toward my goal was just being returned to me.
I also loved FingerSavers.
Training.
We trained.
A lot.
It doesn’t hurt as much as one would think. And you can break wrist or fingers.
The strong survive ;).
But generally it’s not from a ball.
Even at 100kmh/h, remember the ball weighs very little.
Momentum = m*v
It’s also very large. So it exerts very little point pressure. So all that momentum is spread over an area and it’s not a ton, since the ball is so light.
I used to be a goal keeper (and hope to get back to soccer one day), and I never even thought of this.
Sometimes it hurts when you deflect a ball, but I’ve never gotten an injury from it. I’m sure injuries happen and I’ve just been lucky.
There are different ways to stop the ball, you can catch it by bringing it into your stomach, get fingers on it to deflect it (that one hurts the most), use your legs to intercept the ball, stuff like that.
I would also take a guess that the design of the soccer ball helps with the lack of injury. It’s a rubber ball with soft padding on it, inflated with air. So it doesn’t have the mass to do a lot of damage.
It is all part of the training. Although I never played any close to professional I would have a lot of training being able to handle powerful shots. You kinda try to use parts of the hand that can handle that kind of power. You also learn how to kinda work with the ball. The same with falling techniques, you teach your body to be flexible and nimble when hitting the ground.
For instance if you get shot directly at your body, if you place your hands above in the trajectory of the ball, and the ball more stops and goes to the ground. If you for instance would place your hands in the middle of the trajectory it might hurt your hands/fingers. If it is shot outside your body you would want to kinda deflect the ball so you change its trajectory.
Some gloves are also excellent at absorbing some of the power. I also would tape my wrist.
I however used to play with a friend who had his shot measured over 120 km/h, he once shot such a powerful shot that my hand felt like it was broken.
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