Hockey Goalie Needs Better Mental Concentration & Focus

Athletes Focus & Concentrate Best Mentally On The Field When They Train For It OFF The Field!

When sports athletes come to me for advice on “getting their head in the game” through better mental concentration and stronger mental focus, one of the first things I do is find out about the game coaching they’ve already received over time, and invariably I find that the majority of sports coaches are virtually ignorant on how to teach the actual cognitive mechanics of mental concentration and mental focus.

These poor athletes are commanded, “CONCENTRATE!”, “FOCUS!”, but there usually isn’t anyone around who knows how to educate and train a player on the fundamentals of Attention Control, Span, Endurance, Thought Control, Emotion Control, On-Demand Relaxation, Singular Concentration, Present-Moment “FLOW STATE,” or Long-term Mental Focus.  So, when one hockey goalie named Zach asked me for tips, I wrote this post in such a way that, no matter what your sport, you can think about an approach to building mental concentration and mental focus OUTSIDE of the game so that you have it mastered in every area of your life, able to apply it to your sport with casual, refreshing ease.

Zach asks:  I am a hockey goaltender and lately I have been having a problem with overthinking while playing and not being able to calm down and think positivley (if consciously at all). I need help being able to calm my mind down and be mentally calm in the game. I guess this takes many things but any strategies would help!

Consider that your issue is not only over-thinking, anxiety, and negativity during the game.  Rather, your concern should be that such a mental habit expresses itself outside the game as well; after all, it is a mental HABIT.  For practical purposes, you certainly need to master your mental performance on the ice, but that will happen MUCH FASTER and occur with GREATER EASE if you do so OFF THE ICE, as a matter of a NEW MENTAL LIFESTYLE.

On the ice, you need to know merely WHERE and WHEN to direct your attention, because you should learn HOW to direct your attention and control your thoughts before you ever lace up.  Learn to concentrate well in all your daily activities, and doing so as a hockey goalie will become natural for you.

I’m taking the privilege of assuming you have already made your game skills development into a philosophy of unconscious competence; that is, you do not have to think about proper and efficient execution of the appropriate hockey techniques and methods.  If you do not currently practice that intensely, or are not coached under that approach, adopt it immediately.  I’m probably preaching to the choir with this statement, but when you do not have to concern yourself with skills performance, then the act of concentrating on concentration will have no distracting mental competition, and you’ll progress exceedingly well.

Here are some steps for you:

• Attention Control & Targeting – get several techniques to practice OFF THE ICE for targeting and controlling your attention so that you familiarize and habituate the process.  Learn to master attention and thought ‘off-ice’ so that attention and thought are not an issue ‘on-ice.’ Also, you can learn to direct your attention along the four zones (inner, outer, wide, narrow) masterfully so that your Attention Skills are as much unconsciously competent and easily natural to you as skating itself.
• Devise Pre-Game and In-Game ATTENTION TARGETS – devise and practice placing and holding your attention onto specific targets (including your physical tension level) as necessary for efficient, proficient game-time performance.  As an example, you should master the ability to target your attention onto your breathing and body in order to quickly center and calm yourself WITHOUT losing your grip on the game situation.  There is a basic course we provide at our website for free that will effectively get you started, and you can always get more training as a subscriber when you wish.  As a Goaltender, you have the increased challenge of controlling your attention and physical state from shot to shot, rather than from shift to shift as others on the ice get to do.
• Study concepts, principles, & methods of ‘FLOW STATE’ as a matter of fascinating personal interest – Because there is very little time in hockey for analytical thinking, then there’s certainly no room for your mind to be chattering with itself.  You must master the ability to ‘CLEAR THE MECHANISM’ (quote from the movie ‘For The Love Of The Game’, starring Kevin Costner) and see ahead of the action to where you can, in MENTALLY RELAXED QUIETNESS, perceive the lines of action unfolding with no distraction whatsoever, keeping you on the leading edge of everything that’s occurring in and around your territory, as well as giving you a deeper, broader sense of the overall game ongoing.  The Flow State is mastered first OFF the ice so that you can practice it in PRACTICE and it be available to you in every game.  Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky – ‘Flow State’.

I want you to keep this in mind:  FLOW STATE IS THE MENTAL EQUIVALENT OF UNCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE AT MENTAL CONCENTRATION.  That is, it is being able to concentrate your mind singularly, powerfully, efficiently, and effectively without struggle or strain, without wrestling with unwanted thoughts, because you have so well practiced it prior to requiring the skill in a game.

• You must master a practical method for yourself for quickly checking on and adjust degrees of tension in your body using your breathing as your primary attention target and launching point from which you thereafter scan yourself, QUICKLY, and release any unhealthy, interfering physical stress – this action in itself gives your mind something to do, leaving no room for unwanted thoughts, allowing you to put yourself back in fully and take control of any part of your game in that moment.  Much of the time, you’ll find that body tension is a direct result of ongoing, anxious or negative mental chatter, so using your physical body as an attention target ‘distracts the distractors’.

I cannot emphasize enough the need to master mental concentration OFF THE ICE so that you become exceedingly skilled and able to implement those mental skills ON the ice.

To determine a specific list of points during your play in which to bring your attention back to center, adjust your breathing rate and body tension, and give yourself proper mental commands to direct your attention onto an immediate task, consult your coaches AND do everything you can to consult with Goaltenders who are BETTER than you are to get THEIR recipe for how and when THEY do it – ESPECIALLY, you should consult RETIRED PROFESSIONALS who did very well in their careers.