Topic: Gold Medal Pathway, Mental Performance
Presenter: Lucas Madill, CMPC/CSPA
With a focus of educating and engaging U16 AAA players from across Ontario, the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF) is offering the opportunity for players and coaches to participate in the Program Of Excellence Webinar Series. The progressive program, created in conjunction with Hockey Canada’s Program of Excellence is a continuation of the U15 Program of Excellence which most players participated this past spring/fall.
The goal of the Program Of Excellence Webinar Series is to educate players on the Hockey Canada and Ontario Program of Excellence process and the opportunities they have. It will also introduce players to on-ice skills, habits, off-ice nutrition/hydration, physical and mental preparation required for athletes entering the Hockey Canada Program of Excellence.
The Program Of Excellence Webinar Series will be presented by Hockey Canada Staff, Hockey Canada Skills Coaches and Subject Matter Experts and will be open to all current U16 AAA OHF registered players and coaches.
hi everyone uh thanks so much for having me here today my name is Lucas madil I’m a certified mental performance consultant member of the Canadian sports psychology Association and uh I’m here to talk to you today about building mental skills so uh I’ll be looking at two different screens so if my eyes are wandering don’t worry about that um I’m just just going over different notes and different images on different screens so there’ll be a bunch of videos here today just to give you a little background on myself um I grew up when when I was your age I worked at a hockey rank uh there my twin brother my Dad ran a rank in Montreal I played midor triaa hockey for the laon Louis Lions uh we went away to a prep school the two of us together I then played University hockey at two schools um I did my sports psychology master’s degree at unb and then uh I coached there so I coached there my twin brother went on to a pro coaching career and I joined him for a little bit I’ve been working with Hockey Canada now for about 8 years I’ve won some u8 gold medals um I’ve won a World Champ World Junior champion ionship and then worked with them again this year now I still work with Team Canada I um I also coach my daughter’s team and uh I’ve had a chance to work with some of the best young athletes I’d say that the the country’s had so first overall picks perspective first first overall picks and I’m here to hopefully today to share with you some of the things I’ve learned from these young athletes and teams and coaches that I’ve worked with and hopefully you can apply them so that you can start building a stronger mental game and uh and before I do that I’ll just Define what that means so when we talk about mental performance the biggest thing is to say that you know just cuz you do some of these things it doesn’t necessarily make you a better player so what you’re capable of let’s say in practice everybody knows those people that are unbelievable in practice they they can you know they can do things they never think of but then in a game this is what they deliver so it’s somewhere in this this green range right here and the goal of mental performance isn’t to turn you into an unbelievable player it’s to try and make sure that what you deliver lines up with what you’re capable of and uh there’s about I’d say five Tools in particular mental skills mental tools that I think athletes could incorporate pretty easily into their games that’ll make that go a little bit easier so those tools are right here now the first thing I’m going to talk about today is goal setting then some emotional control and focusing techniques then some imagery and then selft talk and deliberate practice so these uh these five things will probably take us the next you know 30 35 40 minutes so I’ll try to load them with examples to help make it more entertaining but um you know I think that if you can do this it’s a simple way of improving your game and if you’re a coach or a parent this is a good way to talk to your your child about about incorporating things when you see some of the things that uh that I’ll try to identify here so the the first thing I’m going to ask you even though you can’t answer it it’s what percent of the game is mental and most people will say yeah the game is 90% mental we look at somewhere like Wayne Gretzky who’s you know physical skills were never off the charts but he’s just so good and so far ahead of everyone else you say yeah it’s probably 90% other people say 50% regardless of that if we said what percentage of your practice is mental then people would have a lot lower answer because a lot of times they think that that you know that means they got to be sitting in a room quietly uh rehearsing mentally or doing meditation and that’s not actually the truth the truth is both of these things should be occurring at the exact same time so um when you’re practicing every day there’s ways to focus on your mental skills and you should be doing it every single day it doesn’t need to be a separate thing that you’re putting extra time aside for but all practice if you’re focused and you’re engaged and you’re present then you should be getting the same thing and I’m going to play this clip of rafen Adell um he’s talking about the exact same thing hopefully you all know Rafa he’s he’s one of the best tennis players of all time a lot of people would say the greatest so just listen to him talk here you go on court every day and you don’t complain when you play bad when you have problems when you have pains you put the right prude the right face you were not negative about all the issues that happened if I playing bad if I have physical problems you go on court every day with the passion to keep practicing no that that’s that’s the the mental world so call that the mental work and if you ever watched raap a play he’s like the mentally toughest athlete I’ve ever seen and and it’s not something that happens just in competition this has to happen every single day so he talks with bad language negativity so these are the kinds of things that we’re going to try to get to today and and discuss so first thing I want to talk to you about is goal setting now at the start of every year maybe at the start of a summer you should all be setting goals and I think this is super important because you need some direction even now I’m I’m debating uh my daughters are just getting into hockey but I’m debating trying to find a way for them to you know measure how they’re shot if they want to improve it like rather than just say I want to get better at it but actually knowing how they’re going to measure it so there’s I think everybody needs to have specific goals they got to be measurable goals they should be attainable my seven-year-old daughter shouldn’t be saying they want to have 100 mile hour Slap Shot by the end of the summer they should be relevant they’re never going to take a slap shot not not right now uh at their level and then time base so you have to have a timeline for it now you’ve heard of those before I also want to talk to you about habits this book Atomic habits has been pretty popular lately and it’s really important because it’s not just about creating goals but it’s about turning into something like so when you’re let’s say you have a shooting plan you’re also becoming a more disciplined person more dedicated person like in this book James Clear says you know I write that I want to make my bed every day my goal isn’t to make my bed every day my goal is to be an organized person who who does everything right so that’s one step in that and that’s part of the process so what I want to talk to you right now is about about different types of goals and a lot of players what they do is they set outcome goals like I want to play in the OHL I want to play in the NHL I want to score 30 goals a season and and those are great it’s great to have those kinds of aspirations but it’s a little bit different than a goal to get those 30 goals you have to set what we would call a performance goal and a performance goal would be something like I want to get 10 shots on that per game because you know the best Shooters in NHL they only score on 10% of their shots so I need 10 shots just to get a goal a game but then I need a process goal and the process goal is I’ve got to develop a quicker release so that I can get more shots off from more places and I’m going to show you this a couple quick videos on this so I remember talking about this years ago and I’m watching the NHL the night before and I and I I see these shots in in one single game against the Lea so I say no dust that means no stick handl on the other down L they no stick handling but schz holds the again one big there no stickling no stick handling no scking here the rust comes up with a puck Malin over on his right on the left Jake gel the go he scores T took that going backwards now he’s on his some [Applause] help back the Penguins with numbers again tanv up the middle following they score at tan the passing Lane is wide open MCC gets it settled and puts it under and I’ll skip that one too so if you look at those plays no one is stick handling any of these plays they’re so one process goal would be in practice I’m going to make sure that once I’m over the Blue Line every time I receive a pass I’m going to grip it and shoot it there’s no more stick handling over the blue line and that doesn’t mean you have to do that forever but if you want to get good at it then you got to start somewhere so that that no dust one is another one now the quicker releas is like being able to shoot I see other players that come in every single practice they come in and they shoot from between the hash marks like on the opening shooting drills there’s very few That’ll Walk in they take one step over the blue line and they snap it from there and I think about about uh working with Conor Bard at last year’s World Jr he had this you know he had this unbelievable game against Slovakia where he scored a couple goals for us but I’ve got players when I got back they’re like how do I shoot like that that guy scores every shot I go every shot so then I put this video together because it’s it’s far from that so just watch watch these shots during this one game let me move that photo back okay he was one for one there Bard shoots moves in Long shoots again that’s blocking get the right back in Bard in shoots shaved off guy Playard shoots that tip back for Bard inard shoots inard shoot block loose Berard a sa Berard for Berard moves and shoots looks ACR the El over winds in Berard still with the back hand Bard in shoot Grant Clark tied up drops it back comes Bernard Bernard shoots guy in the save and Bernard holds the line Bernard back with it slides if you’re watching the game obviously an awesome moment 16 shots later so it’s not it’s not like it just happened with one good shot or he’s got that’s a good shot and like this player asked me does he score every shot it’s it takes a ton and I’d even argue that even that goal the only reason this one went in is he shot the puck so many times at this person this person goes down to block it like this person thinks well he’s definitely he’s definitely shooting again and then the deak works so to me if you have a process goal of developing a quicker release improving your shot release so I can get off anywhere then then you’ve got something to work towards and it’s all those little things you have to focus on in practice and and then yeah maybe your your goal is get 10 shots a game but you found the process to make it better so so that’s the first thing and that’s just School saying the next thing I’m going to talk to you about is emotional control and this is so important because especially and I’m going to say your age younger players remember that that our brains work differently okay our minds work a little bit differently we can get really uh you know we can get really tense um we’re still our brain is maturing you know our brain doesn’t really physically like mature until we’re 25 years old so it’s really important that we try to take control of our our brain and the best way to do that is through breathing techniques and you’ve probably seen this uh I’ll show you some articles but if you haven’t seen this uh interview of Novak jokovic it just came out on 60 Minutes uh this summer U Google it it’s awesome um but here he’s talking about conscious breathing like ways that he controls his his mind he also even talks about watching his opponents to see if they’re breathing because he knows when they’re not they start to panic uh last year or two years ago Justin Thomas this article came out about him trying to control his heart rate before putts because he’d gets so an ious so you could see his heart rate going up and then it would dip right before Putt and then if he made it it would jump again Christian Javier in the World Series you could see him doing deep breathing between every inning just visualizing but also getting his heart rate down same thing here with Phil Mickelson he became the oldest major winner of all time and this article came out right after the event saying you know as he strolled up the Fairway um he was uh he was trying to lower his heart rate and his coach says when you focus on your breathing say breathe in on a Rec count so and then we hold it for two and then you release slowly we saturate our red blood cells with oxygen and when this happens the Primal part of our Hardware is tricked into believing everything is calm and that’s what we want especially between shifts like yeah you want to react and and be high on when you’re on the ice like your heart rate gets up and then you want to bring it back down between shifts um and what we do here is we trick ourselves into thinking that you know everything’s under control and that we’re not panicking we’re not overwhelmed so that’s one thing that we can do to like even if you write a little note on the back of your stick that says just breathe and even if you write you know three in hold for two a slow release like four out uh there’s another great technique if if anybody here listen Andrew huberman he’s got a podcast this guy’s awesome but he talks about what he calls a physi physiological sigh so I’ll play that for you here billions of people suffer from stress a physiological sigh is a pattern a breathing that involves two inhales followed by an extended exhale now you can do physiological size voluntarily anytime you’re feeling too stressed and you want to feel more calm you do it like this so it’s a double inhale and typically the first inhale is longer than the second but the second one is still important to do and then a very long extended exhale typically both inhales are through the nose and the exhale is through the mouth that’s the most effective way to do the physiolog olical side so if you’re feeling stressed in any circumstance inhale twice through the nose and then exhale long through the mouth if you want you can repeat it a second or even a third time but typically just one or two maybe three physiological size are sufficient to bring your level of stress and alertness down very fast and allow you to feel more calm so a great time to do that especially for hockey players is is rate between a shift so we can you know we do that we do that three times and it just helps us get back to a reentered point and and I could talk to you more and more about this but you know there New Zealand All Blacks who I love this rugby team and they’re the winnest international team of all time they talk about having a blue head or or a red head and a red head is when you get you get overwhelmed and you’re too you know the blood’s pumping you’re not relaxing but a blue head is clear thinking and what you want to do and think about between shifts is that you’re you’re getting yourself back to having a blue head so when you get back out there you don’t take bad penalties so so that’s something to think about and and something to do and it’s a really really easy strategy that you can incorporate to start having a little bit more emotional control okay um what what the the logic is behind this We call we have two systems in our body we have this the sympathetic nervos system and the parasympathetic nervous system and I’m not here to give you a science lesson or go too far into this but sympathetic nervous system that’s what kicks into gear like when we’re threatened so uh you know if you hear a noise in the house and you’re you hear you know you’re alone in the house and you heard something fall you get like your adrenaline surges well that’s that sympathetic nervous system and that’s what happens when we get on the ice is is we we have a shift and usually if we’re out for they’re too long we usually do the you know the silliest things that we do on a shift or maybe the you know the least intelligent penalties that we take they happen at the end of it so what happens is when you get back to the bench that’s where you want to reset and you want to try and activate that parasympathetic nervous system and that’s that’s what helps us reset think clearly not overreact not say bad things to our coaches teammates the opponent not lose our mind on the referees and and you see it throughout history you know you could see I always show this clip because um I you know I think nasm cadri is an awesome player this is the last game he ever played in Toronto um and he had done this about three years in a row but he’s sticking up for a teammate and then he and then he does something gets you know him suspended they end up losing the series because they needed him in the lineup and you think well ultimately what was the best decision and I think of Tony Romo he’s a great color commentator now but he was an awesome quarterback he talks about looking at things was like what’s my tendency in these situations what’s my tendency what is my internal clock do what does my blood pressure do what does this happen and what you do is when you actually analyze yourself you can always know that’s going to happen and then get comfortable with it and then also you can play against it a little bit in other words when my brain says this don’t fall for it when my brain or my blood pressure does this don’t fall this is my tendency so that’s another big thing to do is on top of that reset between shifts is trying to identify what your Tendencies are before the shifts before you go out there and you you know you’re all too young to know what Crosby was like when he first got in the league but he used to be not the most disciplined they called him crybaby I mean he’s my favorite hockey player I I love him I think he’s got so much Integrity so much character but I mean I’ve watched him in my agees mature over the years and I look at the last playoff when they won the cup and people trying to agitate him and him just walking away the whole time um you know right here PK suban right in his face trying to agitate him and and get him to do something stupid and just ignoring him and and that’s probably the kind of thing where you know what your Tendencies are and you don’t do it and we showed this you know I I look at the uh the world juniors last year and and I see this guy you know basically doing something in B where he could easily retaliate but when you retaliate it’s just you know all all you’re doing is showing them that that they’ve agitated you and that they’re under your skin you don’t retali retaliate and you control that and that guy gets a penalty and then and then you try and make them pay so I could go on over and over about this um we talk a lot about nose breathing in sports psychology and I I won’t get into that today but there’s been so many great books I just what I want you to take away with is to say that anytime you’re not playing you should be recovering so recovering is different than resting and that’s a LeBron James quote um from the Tim Ferris podcast and I just think that it’s something you should always be thinking about is like you’re is 60 Minutes long 60 Minutes of playing time and you’re on the ice for let’s say 18 to 20 those minutes but the other 40 you’re recovering and and that active active breathing it’s all part of it is making sure you have an anchor that you can come back to and that you know when you’re you know you start to spin out of control you’ve got something to help you reset so that’ll be your your your breathing technique okay so um there’s a couple great books I’m breathing if anyone here is a big reader this one breath is my favorite of all of them uh they’re all great uh just think that some people aren’t going to read them all and and this book bre’s got a great toolkit in the back where it tells you about different uh breathing techniques so that you can incorporate so now what to do so you’re you’re breathing maybe you’re trying to reset before games one thing to do is then also to practice visualization so I did my Master’s thesis on imagery um I’m going to show you this clip this is from Devon Levi from the world juniors a couple years ago and uh he’s just talking about uh how he visualizes before game so I’ll play this before I talk anymore do you feel their nerves I’m going to go right up here playing this tournament my whole life and to to actually be in there is it’s it was unbelievable and I got my feet under me pretty quick and I just played the game one of the things you try and do in your preparation is to mentally focus a little bit and focus on your love and enjoyment of the game take us through what that means and did you do that tonight yeah for sure I always do um before the game I just sit down by myself and I just go back to moments in my life that I I just loved playing and play played well and just enjoyed the game and I I I Feel That Fire um before I play and I think that’s that’s that’s what helps me play well seems like you’ve added another moment to your list now yeah that’s true congratulations thanks thank you do you feel so what he’s describing there and I think every athlete needs this is sort of like that mental Rolodex that you go back to and and replay your successful moments and uh you know try to make sure that you’re uh giving yourself reminding yourself of the things you should be confident on and your abilities uh another thing is is like it says right here with Jack Nicholas imagery could be thought of as going to the movies inside your head and with golf it’s different it’s a closed sport so they have moments before every shot where you can calm down visualize hockey is an open skill sport so stuff is happening all the time but every time I make a pass I still want to see it right before I make it like I still want to just imagine the crispness of a pass right across my partner and when I’m going in on a breakway maybe I see the hole and I see it like I visualize it right before I do it but then there’s also pregame prep so there’s different types of visualization that you want to practice and engage in and and I think that uh you know what what’s important to understand is that let’s say you’re injured and you can’t practice you could use imagery and visualization to enhance your skills um if it’s before game and you know you want to warm up you could do the same thing so just to give you a quick out um outline of this like people use imagery for a variety of reasons you could fix improper technique so if you could imagine like a gymnast trying to uh do a pole vault and want to see themselves or no uh uh let’s say they’re doing a balance beam and they’re trying to see themselves walking properly or doing their they can see themselves from a third person perspective um they could also try to work on eliminating negative thoughts so you replay the event and you think of well where do things go wrong and how do I eliminate that how do I see myself not just as only being successful but as being resilient like what’s the what’s the version of myself that just never quits and I visualize that um it can help us increase our confidence confidence our Focus but um really what what happens when we visualize something so if you could look at this image here and you say if I visualize a bicep curl like let’s say I do a real bicep curl there’s a little impulse from brain to muscle if I Vis if I visualize it there’s the exact same impulse will go off it’s a little bit weaker in magnitude but it’s identical in pattern so the same thing is happening so I’m I’m actually coding these movements symbolically so even if I was visualizing a tow drag or something I can I can code it I see myself doing it and the same kind of the same kind of impulse is happening and I’m still you know I’m I’m still training my nervous system to to react the way I want it to um so that that’s visualization now you’ll see before games you’ll see players doing this like I said there’s Christian Javier is doing that um if you seen that Netflix F1 documentary uh Pier gastley here he’s doing he’s visualizing his race beforehand he’s visualizing the turns the clicks of his fingers so all that is visualization I got this video of Kevin Durant when he’s injured a few years years ago you’ll see like uh he’s walking around and and he’s you know’s he’s injured but he’s still seeing himself on the court he’s still seeing himself turning around there’s different forms of imagery that maybe used to be done in a therapist’s office but a lot of it this this form petl imagery is what I did my my imagery research on like you want to be out there you want to be out there uh maybe you’re looking at the environment maybe you’re sitting on the bench and and you’re trying to replicate what’s been happening here and the more things if you’re in the setting it’s easier imagine cuz you don’t use up as much brain power so if I told you imagine getting stung by a bee right now and you try to imagine it and you well it’s well if I add an image to it if I say okay look at the Stinger right now and and God hopefully no one here has a b Sensitivity I do I when I get stunk by them my entire body goes numb I don’t need you know I don’t need to go to the hospital but it it feels like it so um but then if I said to you okay now imagine that and then imagine the noise and I add that in it well now it becomes even easier and I actually I’ll get these Shivers through my body that remind me the last time I did it so what petp imagery asked us to do is just you do it in the environment if you’re a hockey player you sit on the bench and do some of your imager you hold your stick in your hands and do it if you’re Max Sher he’s not even holding the ball but he wants he’s got his eyes open he wants to see everything here um you look at goalies like Connor holluk who’s the best in you know he’s the best in the world right now this guy’s you know he’s scanning the ice before games he’s he’s pretending he’s looking at his angles so there’s tons of things that you can use imagery for to prepare for a game and add to your pregame press another thing that I really try to encourage athletes to do is I again I’m coming back to this carer Bard only because I think he’s he’s so impressive is you watch this guy I watch this guy shoot a puck and here in the bottom photo he’s breaking his stick and and all these other ones like it again it looks like a it looks like a bow and arrow his stick and he’s shooting like a m and I see so many times with the kids that I coach where they just walk in and they waste shots like they walk in they kick a leg up they shoot it’s like they’re barely putting any weight into it and I think man this guy’s got the best shot in the world and you look at his face when he shoots like this was a just video clip of him shut shutting his eyes to the World Juniors and and I think man this guy is really really like giving everything he’s got on this shot and I’ve got players that I work with that have you know a million times worse shot and they’re not I don’t think I have ever cringed like that once in my life shooting a puck and then this year with Bard in the NHL I remember I remember there was this Kevin BX that did a report on him saying this guy every time he shoots he looks like he’s trying to put it through the twine like he he’s putting everything into it so what I’m my message to you is right before a shooting drill like are you seeing yourself putting everything possible into every shot so when I’m standing in line and I think okay I’m going down it’s just an opening shooting drill to warm up the goalie but can I see myself putting everything into it cuz that’s imagery as well when I see myself right beforehand and and I’m imagining the effort that it takes so that I’m not just going in and shooting halfhazard and you know this the the the technical skills don’t matter that much there’s this great book called blink where they say you know they ask different athletes like Andre Agy what he does on a serve and he can’t actually describe it like a lot of athletes they’ve got a feel for it they feel it and they trust it so don’t worry too much about that I mean if you’re working in the basement you want to work on technique that’s one thing but when you’re in the Heat of the Moment and or even in a practice and you’re about to go down and shoot you say I’m going to put everything into this everything and I VIs visualize that I feel it I go down I put everything into it and and don’t worry so much about like uh you know all the technical aspects in that moment there’s other times for that when you’re working on uh skills all right we got two more here so the next one is selft talk and this one is so important before I talk to you about uh Teenage athletes maybe not you know our brain’s fully mature they say at 25 I don’t even know I’m in my 4S I still don’t know if mine’s there yet but with selft talk this is the way that we talk to ourselves and this is so important um I see so many young athletes that are so negative and I think they’re negative because they think they’re supposed to be like they get back to the bench and they say God I’m awful like they’ll say something like that and I think they’re saying it because they’re trying they want the coach to know they’re not happy with themselves they want their teammates to know but it is so self-destructive that negative selft talk and I’m not saying you should say I’m the greatest there’s there’s a different like you have to tell yourself something like you’re a fighter Luke like you are a warrior you’re going to figure this out you are a fighter that’s different that’s different than saying you’re going to be successful cuz you don’t know that you’ll be successful but you could know that you’re going to fight this is a quick clip of Roy mcy I’m sure you all know him he he won the FedEx Cup in 2022 as the top golfer and he’s he’s been one of the best golfers for for years now but here’s him talking about a selft talk how does selft talk play a role in your mindset in your game it plays a massive role I I talk to myself a lot on the golf course um sometimes maybe too much but I I I always think to to verbalize something to get something out there I I think it’s always more powerful I mean you can you can think something and and that’s great but if you if you put it out there and whether that’s just to yourself or to someone else you know that’s a very powerful thing um and again using positive words you know one of the things I really tried to do this year is not use the word should I just try I’ve tried to wipe that completely out of my vocabulary because should is very I should have done this I you know it’s just not a it’s not a word that brings a lot of positivity you know I associate it with negativity so even just using positive words is a big thing for me and and that’s just you know that’s what self talk is and it doesn’t have to be about really you know aggressively motivating yourself it can be you know it can be calming it it can be as I you know I I one of the things that I’ve taken from from from this year is that little Mantra or that bit of selft talk from Arthur Ash you know anytime I feel a little bit nervous on the golf course you know I think okay you’re going to be mentally tight and you’re going to be physically loose cuz the last thing I want to be is the other way around if I’m physically tight and I’m trying to hit a shot it’s I’m guiding it and I’m not that’s that’s never going to work how a self talk player okay so um back back to that back to that slide so that’s the other thing there’s when when they talk about saying should the other negative part of that is you’re stuck in the past and one thing we try to talk to athletes about is you don’t want to be too far into the future where you’re saying like is this going to happen is this going to happen is this going to happen and you’re worried about what someone’s going to think or is that SC going to see think this that’s that’s we’re stuck in the future and that’s usually based on like worry um fear when we go to the past that’s regret anger like when I say I should have done this he should have done this this person should have done again that we’re stuck in the past what we want to be is present focus and all that means is saying like what will I do now what what what am I capable of now and when he says like I will do this I will think this I will act this way I will be resilient I will do this then we’re stuck we’re in the present moment you’re saying I’m going to do this right now this is this is where this is where I am right now and here’s what I have to do right now um the should the should have like I said if you get the rid of those little things you’d be surprised the effect they could have in Ethan cross’s book chatter he talks about using the second and third person so if I were to say to myself no Luke you’re resilient you’ll figure this out Luke you’ve done this before you’re going to figure it out you’ll you won’t quit until you figure it out like you want like if I say these things it’s second third person that’s another way that I can help myself and and it’s the same kind of effect that I want to have I’m being encouraging to a teammate so one of the things that people don’t don’t know is that you know there’s so many negative effects of of um selft talk you know we get tense our stress levels go up uh you could suffer from gastrointestinal that negative thinking is almost always always like it comes through when we think negatively and we talk negatively but there’s a lot of stuff happening inside of us and what happens is we we can threaten ourselves the same way as if you know our parents are negative with us and we get anxious about it or our coach is negative you wouldn’t be negative to yourself or to your your teammates that openly so try don’t do it to yourself and that doesn’t mean you lie to yourself it just means you talk to yourself about what you’re capable of uh you know those other qualities like being resilient being competitive um being hard to play against like you can always control those things so that kind of selft talk is supposed to supposed to help you out uh reinforce those things and there’s a great example I want to show you right here from a couple years ago this is Aaron Donald who was you know three-time NFL defensive player of the year but just listen one he talks to himself in the third person just like I just told you from Ethan cross’s book but also listen how simple it is and repeated and constructive it is who you work for right here who you work for all that training you did all everything you do is for this right here come on hey come on you living a dream how bad you want it how bad you want it how bad you want it make the big play huh make the big play huh control the aggression control the aggression come on control the aggression control the aggression control the aggression be great be great be great nothing less come on lock in lock in come on come on what you here for what you work for right here what you train for right here come on that be great you hear me that be great that be great that be great come on so obviously he’s repeating the you know to be great but this is what you’ve worked for he’s reminding himself but the controlled aggression that becomes a mantra and someone like him if you’re in a situation where yeah you don’t want to lose control and take penalties but you want to be aggressive it’s so important so he’s saying it for a reason so what you want to do is try to think of like what can yours be I had a picture before like Steph Curry writes this on his shoe it says I can do all things and I mean if you watched him play he can do all things uh this this funny I saw this one um after after uh John Romy he fell apart at the Masters he end up winning it his coach was on a podcast saying that he was saying I’m Spaniard like almost like the movie gladi like I’m gonna fight through this like um because he’s from Spain and uh you know the same thing with Tony Rome before when I said that don’t fall for it some of you are probably fans of David gogins who when he was in the Navy Steals and he would say can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me like he we’d say it over and over and over again Coach K used to tell his players to say next play so what can be simple repeated and constructive for you that you fall back on um you know that that allows you to stay focused when when maybe you know you start to think about those outcomes you start to think about failure you’re dwelling on the past you’re stuck in the future but you know you could say that you you know I love a challenge I’m a warrior you know I keep going I keep going when other people other people stop I keep going I’m a gamer I’m a Scrambler you know I’ve got grit like uh there’s little things that you can throw in and you say no this is going to be what I say and it’s important it’s not a lie you’ve got to earn it like you can’t tell yourself that you you know you keep going when everyone else quits if you were doing your you know your push-ups the other day and you quit after 15 when you’re capable of doing 40 or whatever it is like you’ve got to earn those things but then then that becomes your selft talk that you use and you remind yourself of so um so yeah and then the last part of selft talk that I want to mention is about body language so I love Steph Curry there’s some athletes I just I just love I you know I always see this with him where he’s nodding on the on the on the court and the same thing with Juan sto this was his first playoff ever I mean he just he just got traded to the Yankees and this guy’s one of my favorite baseball players but Justin verer throws a strike on him an unreal pitch what does he do he nods about it like he’s like all right all right you can see him nodding here and then he does it every bat guy throws a strike on him he just nods like he’s saying all right yeah give give me everything like give me your best that’s body language um this uh Stephanie lobing she was the goalie with Canada in in the last uh you know the last Olympics I thought she did an unreal job right before the kicks she was looking making herself look big like almost you know and that’s a technique that a lot of soccer goalies use but I think you know they’re not looking small right now they’re looking big and then you’re feeling big and then this one from breakpoint if you see Rafa adal like I I love this like he’s playing Casper Roode here and he you know he’s standing still and and Casper says in the documentary how intimidated they are by these guys and I think well look at the body language on the do in the hallway like does this look like a guy who’s messing around like absolutely not and I think that that’s so important is that you know if a guy like this who maybe feels like an inferior opponent goes man this guy’s taking this serious right now that’s body language that’s that’s uh what Raph has given off that’s that’s important and that’s a big part of being a competitor is that you know you’re the same against everybody not just in the final moments so uh selft talk body language is another important thing because you’re sending messages to other people but also to yourself and the last thing of the day that I’ll talk about for for you all is deliberate practice so deliberate practice this is purposeful practice and and you probably think well I do that all the time but if you really think about it like if you’re practicing for and I think about this now with my young children I’m coaching their seven and eight-year-old team but there’s so many wasted reps like they where they’re not practicing deliberately like they’re doing the wrong thing or they’re not paying attention they’re staring at the uh ceiling they’re smelling the popcorn in the rink and that’s all they’re thinking about deliberate practice believes that every single movement of ours is a PR precisely timed electrical signal so just think about that way so even imagine again I’ll say a tow drag but that is a signal from our brain to the muscles that that that create that that movement now the second thing is that there’s this myin which is an insulation okay it wraps these nerve fib so if you look at the picture here that’s that’s milin wrapping it okay the more we fire a circuit so the more you practice that task let’s say it’s a tow drag then the more milin will surround that circuit and it’ll become stronger and faster and more fluid okay so milin this is all scientifically based it basically if you it transforms those those narrow Alleyways into Broadband lightning fast super highway so now when you go to create these movements instead of having this slow transition it’s it’s it’s it’s like Lightning Fast which is the way our brain works anyway so you want to get it even faster so how do you practice deliberately what has to be intentional there has to be a specific Focus there has to be like there has to be adjustments made and and this is when you’re learning a skill this is when you’re really trying so the same as when I said when you walk in and take these aimless shots and I showed you the Conor Bard thing and I said some people they walk in and they shoot everything into it every shot so for me I think okay I always want to I always want to try to exemplify what I’m talking about so um I actually I said right what’s a new skill that I can learn that I haven’t learned so for me I was like all right the Michigan move I I I have no business doing it I’m in my 40s I play men’s league occasionally but I could still learn it I’ve never done it I’ve never been able to do that paddle so I I tried it I tried to document it here because I I wanted to learn a new skill and I like can I actually do it with some deliberate practice well here’s the video for you okay the last couple years I’ve been watching these kids kids get their Puck for a Michigan goal and they just put it right on their stick no more that where you flap it down they just pick it up and I thought all right I’m in my 40s now I should be able to try something new so I started trying to practice it in the basement and I couldn’t get the puck to stay on my blade so this is not deliberate practice I’m just trying the same thing over and over so I Googled it I found out that one of the tricks is that you let it run up the heel so you bring it back down you let it spin right up the hill so I practice for about 30 minutes deliberately before I know it I can scoop this thing up easy stays on the blade every time I let it run right up the heel to Mid part of the blade and I can scoop it I put my head down here just so you know that’s me because I feel like uh you might have thought I was cheating and then a few minutes later I’m able to do this and I’m ready for men’s league and I can bust the old Michigan out as soon as I get a chance now some of the men’s leagues I play in are a little rough so I’m going to have to be careful I don’t want to do that move and and have to drop the gloves with someone but what I wanted to do is show if I could learn something new and and like what are the process of of practicing deliberately now you’ll see that I’ll show you each of the examples but Steph Curry this is uh from the allenstein podcast they said he used to not leave the gym until he switched five free throws in a row now why is that deliberate practice one it’s it’s it’s more of a t it’s more challenging than just making the free throw so now you can’t hit the rim two there’s there’s like a a risk reward if you finish you finish you’re done early if you don’t get those five in a row you could be shooting for for five more hours but so there’s a reward there the other thing is the punishment is more practice so this is deliberate like that that not touching the rim is deliberate practice he’s working on a form and and he’s trying to he’s trying to enhance it again this is in practice the same kind of thing is with Phil Mickelson so in in the start of his book when he won the Masters he talks about how he doesn’t tee off until he makes 100 straight three-foot putts now again that’s deliberate practice because the first 10 20 30 40 those are easy there’s no pressure when you get to 60 70 and you think man if I miss now I going to go back to zero if I miss now I going to go back and I might miss my tea time that’s deliberate because there’s something at stake there’s a little bit of you know there’s a little bit on the line so it’s not there’s a tiny bit of pressure it’s not just these aimless putts and but you’re also getting the practice of making that you’re building the confidence that when you get to your your round you’re going to make these putts Sydney Crosby I remember reading Pascal dpri in the Washington Post said if this guy misses something in a game he recreates it a 100 times the next day till he till he perfects it and that’s the same kind of thing there’s no punishment there but he’s saying if I get this chance again I’m going to I’m going to succeed like I’m going to recreate it I’m going to do it till till I can’t get it wrong I watched Ryan O’Reilly on Hockey Night in Canada a few nights they or years ago they showed him when St Louis was making their cup run and then sure enough like they show him doing that in the morning and then he gets the exact same play at night backand right under and I think well this is deliberate practice okay all these things where you’re you know you’re you’re not just doing something that doesn’t work you’re figuring it out and you’re getting it you’re getting it right over and over and over again so in this book Choke U Sean balock she she um she talks about how anything we do and you like I said with the curry example and and the Michelson example is that if you can simulate low levels of stress in practice then it helps us stay calm and cool during bigger competition so that that’s one version of and that was those two the other ones is making yourself stutter a little bit like making sure it’s not smooth so in the Talon code and this book bounce they talk about these three these different techniques here like if you looked at list a if I said Okay I want I want you to unscramble this list and you go okay that’s easy that’s father football doctor elcom teacher that took two seconds so what they did in this study is they asked a group of University students they said half you are going to unscramble these words so list a they unscramble it takes them two seconds list B they get or group b gets this list and they’re the same words but it took a lot longer to see that this was father that this was football that this was doctor that this was elcome this was teacher and what they do is they say Okay a month later they go to those same groups the group that had list a they say hey what were those words you unscrambled nobody remembers list B everybody remembers because they struggled so that struggle is what makes the difference okay and the same thing is this here and these lists here but but like what what happens is that jumble like that when you jumble when it’s not totally easy you know when you have to stop and and deepen your concentration to do it those few seconds it gets imprinted on your memory that’s what sticks it says when you stumble so briefly and then figure it out you experience a micr of struggle and that micr made all the difference so that’s the same kind of thing like even when I was trying to learn that that Michigan move when I was doing it before it just I was like okay it’s not working I’m doing it it’s not working but then when I saw that when the guy was spinning it back and then you use the heel the puck almost spins its way on it’s just I did that for half an hour and then you can do it and then then you figure it out so how do you incorporate that to your practice well it’s all those things it’s shooting like shooting with it with intent like when you’re really really pushing down on your stick to get the full Flex out of it to to try and shoot with every ounce of muscle that you have like that’s a little bit more than just going through the motions you know when you’re passing a little more accurately even when it’s drills like this like I read this book called the best where it says it talks about scanners and uh scanners are people that that are checking their like soccer players that are checking their surroundings and hockey players we hear that all the time you have coaches say head on a swivel head on a swivel uh well in the book they say that like there’s a a statistic that they use in research they call it scans per minute okay and they say that uh you know they said that the three best midfielders in the league when they did them they have 6 searches or scans in the field per second now that means that’s that means they’re doing like 30 a minute the best player Barcelona’s midfielder zavi averaged 83 scans or 83 scans per second that means 50 different snapshots every minute so like he’s his head is almost never looking forward and I think geez am I doing that like when I was a player did I like I know my coaches would say shoulder check when you’re going in there but am I doing it with intent all the time like when I’m standing around and drill am I looking like is there intent that I’m looking around to try and make sure that I’m looking at plays developing like I said before you’re never just resting you’re recovering but when you’re recovering you could take more info in so I’m sitting around I’m watching the ice like is my head scanning all the time am I doing doing intentional things that are deliberate and that’s deliberate practice that’s what you want to work at so I’m at exactly I think the 45 minute Mark right now on at least on my PowerPoint I am I’ve got a few book recommendations for you here um some of them are not for you I know there could be parents and coaches watching this as well so there’s some for them in terms of building a culture for sports psychology uh for for young athletes I think do hard things it’s an awesome new book you could read raise your game is awesome some of these are are you know uh maybe best based on um on different specifics like selft talk the chatter book but for those of you looking for for something that combines everything razor game is an awesome book it’s an easy read for young athletes I say chop wood carry water and pound the stone are both really really good books um and then for coaches and parents that are looking to communicate differently with their teens I think these are some great books up here at the top so I’m going to thank you for your time I really appreciate it and uh uh hopefully you got some stuff out of out of that sticks and if you can try to focus on just those then then it’ll help you build your game so take care and uh thank you again
