The Ride to the Rink: Kurtis Gabriel’s Simple Mental Reset for Hockey Players

This episode is powered by NHL Sense Arena. Hello, hockey skaters and goalies around the world, and welcome back to another edition of The Ride to the Rink. It's Lee and Mike here today, and our good friend Curtis Gabriel played in the NHL for many years, had an amazing career, but above all is an amazing person, is joining us here today to talk to you on your ride to the rink. I'm going to throw it to Mike for the first question. We'll get going here.

So, Curtis, I think, you know, in your experience and the stuff that you've done as an athlete, as a professional athlete, and understanding, you know, how long seasons are, how long a process is, how long development takes, can you just talk to our players uh without getting into the Dalai Lama and getting in too much uh you know, have to change my whole life? Like, what can I do as a player right now to refocus, kind of reset, find a mindset to get me over little humps in my game? Uh, bad practice, a bad shift, a bad drill, maybe I said something wrong to the coach. What's a what's a strategy I could use to help me get through those little, you know, little difficult times?

It's called the psychological sigh. Everybody can do it with me in the car right now. Whoever's driving, be careful, keep your eyes open. All you got to do is double inhale. You double you inhale through your nose really hard. And then again, another top-up one. You hold it for a little bit, and then you breathe out through pursed lips for as long and slow as you can. Take a pause at the bottom, do it two more times. Just three breaths like that. Your mind goes with the breath. It can allow you to have that little bit of separation. I did this on the bench at the end of my career when I was really, really struggling. I do it now in life. Psychological science, scientifically proven to get you out of that fight or flight. Oh my God, I made a bad player. Oh my God, I scored a goal. I got to calm down. It gets you back to that rest and digest, peaceful state, ready to approach your next task with a clear mind.

I will say, parents, if you are listening, you can do this too. But uh, as Curtis said, not while you're driving, please. Um, uh, you know, it it's it's great advice, Curtis. And I'm gonna pull the thread on this too, because kids, you know, when you're a kid, you can feel a lot of big emotions, really big emotions, right? And Curtis said it. There's a thing called the fight or flight response. And it's it's built from our evolution, right? We've had this since I will say caveman, cavewoman times, right? Of survival. That's still innately in us, but we've learned a lot about how our mind works, we learned a lot about consciousness, okay, and how to expand upon that. So here's my my question, Curtis. This is where it's going. Kids, I want to explain this to you too, because I think a lot of you don't know this. When you hit your, we'll say teenage years, that time period, very interesting thing happens with your brain. Okay, and this has scientifically been been shown. I'm not making this up, where a lot of these defense mechanisms in your brain from emotion come down. And that's why you have insanely big emotions because your brain is allowing you to learn now how to deal with them. So we shut off some of these responses. This is the time period of your life where you're the most spongy to learn new things, just like the exercise that Curtis talked to you about. Another big part of it, he just taught you how to snap yourself a little bit present to break away from some of those feelings. Curtis, I want you to talk about also identifying different feelings and how to work through the process of I am really scared, angry, excited, nonchalant, whatever those feelings are, tell the kids the process of identifying that feelings, working through those feelings, and then where you might want to be on the other side of those feelings.

Absolutely. And I think it it moves from that first one to this. So that's what you do kind of in the moment. But if you want to work on this, and it's a great thing that a mom and son, father, brother, sisters can do together, is then sit down and do that same exercise of breathing and then feel into and then consciously go into what does it feel like when I feel fear? What does it feel like when I feel elation? Where do I feel that? Do I feel tightness in my chest when I'm scared? Do I feel tightness in my jaw? When I'm imagining a moment of scoring, what opens up in me? How good does that feel? You start to map. And I know a lot of kids like video games out there. It's like one of those games where you don't know the map and you have to walk the map to illumine the map, and then you get to see wherever you go, it kind of lights up. This is what you're doing with your own emotions. You're starting to map your emotions and knowing, oh, that's what it feels like when I'm scared, when I'm worried about making a turnover. That's what I'm worried about when uh, you know, my brother gets mad at me and chases me around the house. That's what it feels like when I score a goal and I come back to the bench and I'm talking a lot and I can't really just like calm myself down. You start to map these emotions, and that is so valuable. What I tell kids, these OHL players that mentor it a little bit, like the one thing I want you to know is that no matter what happens, you're okay. In hockey, the higher you go, the crazier it gets, the crazier the decisions, the more cutthroat it is, the more business-like it is. But you have to stay even keeled through it all. That is a superpower.

And I'm I'm gonna tell a quick story here, Curtis, if it's okay. I was playing when I was still in my career in a really high-level game, and the pressure started to get to me a little bit. And I remember I was sitting on the bench, and I I felt like I couldn't move my legs sitting there. They felt like a thousand pounds. And this really interesting thing happened. I was sitting there, I even told my teammate, like, I don't I can't move my legs right now, right? And it's you start to realize, well, there's no one sitting here on my legs, there's no extra weight on my legs. Like, I'm creating this in my mind due to the pressure. And thank goodness I had a great teammate there that just kind of helped me relax in that moment. And once I got out for my next shift, that feeling went away. But I remember thinking, man, there was something in my mind controlling me there that I need to understand why I felt this way. And just to keep it short, kids, where I got was this was I feeling pressure in that moment? Yes. What I learned to do is understand that feeling. And when it came around again, I had a different mindset of how great is it that I'm in a position to feel pressure right now because that means we're doing well. I'm feeling pressure because I care, right? I'm feeling pressure because the situation I'm in, how great is it to be in this position? And boy, did that change how I approached the pressure at that point. But I had to become aware of it. And as Curtis said, it manifested itself physically in my body, but I was in control. Kids, that's what I'm trying to tell you, too. You're in more control of this than you think, but you have to be able to, and I'm using the word practice, recognize those emotions. Use the tactic that Curtis just said of, hey, that let's breathe. It'll snap you out of it. Here's another one, kids. Your brain may tell you this is stupid, don't do it.

Oh, yeah.

All right. You can go ahead, Curtis.

You can hunt that's you gotta you gotta break through the cringe prison, I call it of the teammates think, oh, that's lame. Let's go play video games. Why do you want to sit and map your emotions? That is the quickest trip to not fulfilling your dreams and not realizing things. Intention matters. I was trying to practice where they said, Gabe, take your cape off. You're not Superman. When Coach Beth blew the whistle between drills to go two laps, I skated two laps. Like if I didn't beat everybody, I'd die. Like, I didn't care what people think. I did not care what people, if I cared what people think, I'm not sitting here talking to you today.

That's an amazing point. And and kids, we want you to take that challenge, right? This is not about being mean to your teammates or telling your teammates I'm better than you, I know this thing that you don't know. That's not it at all. We talked about this on our big episode. All right. And if you want to listen to that, you should. Belief. It all stems from this belief in yourself, in your ability. And again, your friends, your teammates are on their own journey. Don't judge them on their journey, but be in your own journey and have that intention and that belief. All right, guys. Kids, remember wherever you're at on your hockey journey, we believe in you. You should too. For Curtis Gabriel for Mike Vanelli, I'm Leah Elias. We'll see you on the next ride to the ring, kids. Have a good one, skate hard, have fun, go learn something. Take care.