The Ride to The Rink: Mastering Mindfulness with Retired NHLer Riley Cote

Speaker A [0:08 - 0:26]: Riley, we're talking all about young hockey players out there today. One of the things that you say that's. That's really strong is that you're more than just a hockey player. Whether you're an NHL superstar all the way down to someone who's just starting, there are other ways to be creative. There's other ways to define yourself. Being only a hockey player is probably not the best way to do that. Thoughts on that? 

Speaker B [0:26 - 1:54]: Yeah, you know, it's a huge piece of my teachings. You know, I lived it and embodied the hockey players almost to a fault, where, you know, my position now is really separating the human from the hockey player and really putting an emphasis and a focus on improving mental health, emotional intelligence. Just be more mindful and filling up that toolbox, you know, the human toolbox, because hockey will eventually end, and we're going to, you know, we're going to be forced to engage with the real world and, you know, have a, you know, a real world job at some point. And. And I like to think that if you build up that toolbox, it's going to extend beyond hockey, and. But it also is going to pour out and it's going to spill into the hockey performance, sports performance toolbox as well. Because if we're for thinking more clearly, when we're focused, we have the ability to self regulate and all that good stuff, like, naturally, performance increases no matter what we're doing. So separating the human from the athlete seems to be, you know, the direction that I'm trying to teach this in just in a little bit different perspective than most people are used to, but I think just helps cultivate a little bit more healthier minded individual. Not taking away any. Taking anything away from the hockey performance piece, but I think it just shifts that perspective, and it also empowers the person to have some ownership in their lives and in their situation in the hockey world. So, um, yeah, that's where. That's where a lot of my focus is right now. 

Speaker A [1:54 - 2:01]: Do you have one or two quick tips for kids that if they want to get into mindfulness, maybe they can start doing on their own or with their parents? 

Speaker B [2:02 - 3:26]: Yeah, I would say the simplest, uh, the simplest two are just kind of grounding in gratitude. And what I mean by that is the power of gratitude. Right. It's just like shifting that energetic vibration into. Into that high vibe energy. Right. It's like. It's easy to focus on the things we don't have and focus on our energy on. On things when they get frustrating or life gets challenging. But then we can also refocus and reflect on the things we do have, which is, in most cases, a lot of things. Well, first of all, we're alive, we're breathing. And then in the hockey world, we got parents that are supporting us, we got hockey equipment, all this great stuff. So it naturally shifts your energetic frequency in seconds. Grounding. Just grounding, just finding center. And just for 510 seconds, the ability to just kind of be okay with the way the things are and just find presence and a state of calm, you know, natural breathing and then taking a step further. Breathing exercises, right? I mean pranayama and, like, generating life force through breathing has been a thing since the start of time, right? We've just abandoned the idea that, you know, we can tap into breathing as a superpower and not just on a conditioning level, but, you know, the ability to self regulate when things get challenging. So I would say between gratitude, grounding, and tapping into some breathing exercises, simple, basic ways to start and don't require anything besides awareness and focus.