Sept. 7, 2023

The Ride To The Rink - Boosting Your Mental Fitness for Improved Hockey Performance

Show Notes
Transcript

Shifting your focus and quieting your mind can feel like an uphill battle, especially when you have a game on the line. What if we told you that with just 10 minutes a day, you could enhance your mental agility to not only ace those games but also tackle daily life challenges with ease? This episode of Ride to the Rink explores the power of mental fitness and how simple practices can considerably improve your performance on and off the ice.

From centering your attention on a single object to listening to the quietest sound in your surroundings, Lee will walk you through various techniques to sharpen your focus. Remember, what works best varies from person to person, so be patient with yourself and explore different pathways to find what suits you. The key is consistency. Practicing these exercises daily can yield powerful results, boosting your ability to maintain focus in high-pressure situations.

Be sure to check out these past episodes of The Ride To The Rink that are helpful guided meditations to assist you on your mental fitness journey:

- Meditation 1: https://link.chtbl.com/trttr_meditation1
- Meditation 2: https://link.chtbl.com/trttr_meditation2

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Hey everybody, it's Lee.

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Welcome back to another edition of the Ride to the Rink a little short one for those of you that are playing out there.

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Last week, mike went over some great tips on skating at home and practicing at home, so this week I'm going to talk to you about how, in less than 10 minutes a day, you can do some mental reps, some mental fitness reps, to get yourself ready for games for the season, for anything you know.

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At this time of year everyone's back in school, you have your hockey schedule, you have maybe other extracurriculars that you're doing.

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There's a lot of different things going on in your life outside of school and outside of hockey that are going to want you to get better at getting mentally focused all the time.

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And here's how you do it.

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It's just like anything you got to learn to practice.

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So a few things you can do during the day, just for two minutes at a time and it's going to be harder than you think.

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At two minutes at a time you can practice your mental focus by doing something like focusing intently on an object.

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It could be your phone, it could be the back of your hand, it can be a flower, it can be a blade of grass, it can be your hockey stick, it can be whatever you want it to be, but focus on that item really intently for two minutes.

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Look for colors, look for shapes, look for textures, look for anything you've noticed about that that you have never seen before.

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Right, that's the first one.

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That's kind of a visual one.

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Another one you can do is an audible one.

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Close your eyes and listen for two minutes for the farthest away sound you can hear, and then flip it to the closest sound that you can hear.

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You can also do stuff tactilely, touching things, feel something with your fingertips, explore those sensations when you drag one hand down the other, or touch something with your fingertips and feel those textures.

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Perhaps the simplest one to do is just to focus on your breathing.

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Put your hand on your chest or on your belly, take a deep breath in, hold it, feel your chest and your stomach rise and then let it out.

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If you do this for two minutes, you'll get very focused.

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Above all, you got to find what works for you.

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Your ability to practice this a couple minutes, a few times a day, will start to give you certain abilities.

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To bring yourself back to the present moment, and the present moment is just what's happening right in front of you.

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Most of the anxiety that we feel on a day-to-day basis is about something that has not happened yet or something that has already happened.

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That's why we perceive life one second at a time.

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Right now, you're listening to this or watching this.

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This is what's happening for you.

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I'm recording this right now.

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This is what's happening for me.

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So your ability to learn how to bring yourself back to the present moment again, whether it's on a bench in a really high octane game where you need to mentally get focused the more you practice these skills, the easier it's going to be for you to come back to being present, to being focused and to really making sure that the task at hand is primary in your mind.

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But it takes practice A little bit of word for the wise here.

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The first few times you do this, you may feel it right away.

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You might feel nothing the first five or six times you do it, but I can tell you, like most things, the more you practice, the more you take the time to do it, the more you really focus in on focusing for lack of a better word the more you'll be able to do it when the time comes for you to be able to do it.

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Big games, big school moments, big moments at home.

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And again, just to reiterate, there's stress times when you need to become present.

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There's also times you might get too excited.

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We've all been in a situation a game when you're up by two goals with a couple minutes left and you get a little overzealous because you're excited that you're going to win.

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That's a time to become focused.

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Same thing when you're in a game and you know that you're losing by two goals and you feel like that loss is about to come down on you.

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You got to get focused.

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So again, practice these.

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We've created a couple ride to the ring episodes where we give some guided meditation.

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You can look those up.

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But, above all, stay focused, stay present.

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Practice your mental fitness, find what works for you.

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You will have an edge up on all of the competition this season.

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See you next time on the ride to the ring.