Preparing Mentally for Next Season - Junior Hockey News

I thought I would write a short post today on how to prepare for your next hockey season. This will be short because I'm going to write with bullets. It is meant to give you ideas and a way to start to formulate Your Plan. These are some of the components in Your Mental Training Plan and right now is the time to start pulling it together.

• Understand your WHY

 Why do you want to play hockey at this level?

Hint; In my experience simple answers like fun or a college scholarship are not the actual answer. See if you can delve a bit deeper. It may lead you to a better understanding and help you play an achieve more.

• Motivation: This tied into your WHY

Three parts to motivation ( I wrote about this last month) Motivating Hockey Players and Teams

• A.M.P.

Autonomy- Where do you find Freedom
Mastery- Finding drive as you master your skill sets, fitness, etc.
Purpose- What is your purpose behind or including your Why?

• Emotional Intelligence Assessment-

Even if you just think about self-awareness, self confidence, resiliency etc with regards to your personal mindset, it will help you prepare. Know thyself. Or take the ESi I offer.

• Goal Setting:

Set your long term, intermediate and short term goals. Write or Type them out!
Set process goals.
Set goals to work on your EQ (emotional intelligence).
Set goals to work on mental skill sets.
Emotionalize your goals

• Learn how to physically and mentally relax using a form of relaxation training

Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Hypnosis
Meditation

• Learn to control your use of imagery or visualization

 Internal vs external imagery- when and why to use one or the other

• Start thinking about your pre and post game routines now while you have time

 You can see what works now for dry land training and conditioning

• Think about how you dealt with stress this past season

If you believe it hindered you performance talk with your coaches, better yet call me!

• Take time every week to brag about what you have accomplished.

You can do this with a friend or team mate, work out with them to listen and then listen back with them. It works with parents too, but they already know how good you are.

• Think about what leadership role you want with the team

Talk with your coach if you want to take on a visible role

This as I said is a starting place to put together a mental training plan. You likely already have a strength & conditioning plan ready. If performance is 80% mental- What are you doing about it today?

That's about it for this post. Keep in mind you are always welcome to schedule a 20 minute courtesy talk with me via SKYPE. Just go to my web site and when the pop up appears ask to schedule a time. I work with athletes and teams all over the world by phone and SKYPE. TheMental-Game.com The 20 minutes is on me!