Hi Everyone and welcome back to the Hockey Journey Podcast, episode number 52,
Mental Toughness, presented to you by Online Hockey Training. I'm your host, Coach Lance Pitlick. If you're new here, please make sure you subscribe, so you won't miss out on any future episodes.
Before we pay the toll, jump on the highway and begin this conversation if you want to learn more about me, my hockey experiences, what I know, and most importantly, how I've been helping hockey players get good with a stick and puck, just head on over to onlinehockeytraining.com and gain instant access to my 10 part video series where I'll show you everything. Consider it my gift to you.
So for me, summers are my busiest time from a work perspective, because kids are off from school and I get to do as many lessons a day as my body can handle, which is usually 2-4 of them most days from June through August. Most of the players I train listen to the podcast, thank you everyone, I really appreciate all the love, support and positive feedback I'm getting from ya. Thank You The past week, I've asked everyone that stopped over for a lesson what should be the next podcast episode topic. I think I asked 15 players and I was surprised that 10 of them requested the same thing, and that was how to become metally tougher or something to do with mental training.
I have to admit, I didn't anticipate everyone being so similar in their suggestion to me, but it immediately drew me back to my years as a player, and I vividly remember how challenged I was each week to manage my thoughts in a more positive way. My 1st year pro with the Philadelphia Flyers organization, playing in Hershey Pennsylvania, my mind was running wild and it was affecting my on ice performance, so I finally threw in the towel, trying to figure it out on my own, and sought out someone to see if they could help me. Enter Don Olivett (The Ollie Man), who showed me a different way of doing things, which resulted in practices I still use today. If you want to hear that story, I believe it's episode 13, Don Olivett, The Mind Mentor.
Now, though I practice mental toughness training regularly, I'm definitely not an expert in the field, but there are many, who have made the investigation of mental training their life's work and I'd like to share with you some of their most important findings and how impactful this type of mind development is paired to excellence.
For the following books I'm going to reference, know that I'm only scratching the surface of all the learning nuggets in each of the titles. If something resonates with you from a certain book, by the end of this episode, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of your own and read it in its entirety. I'll put the links to each of the titles in the description. With that being said, let's begin.
Book Number 1
Grit
The Power of Passion and Perseverance
by Angela Duckworth
Quote #1
“Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? For most, there was no realistic expectation of ever catching up to their ambitions. In their own eyes, they were never good enough. They were the opposite of complacent. And yet, in a very real sense, they were satisfied with being unsatisfied. Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was the chase— as much as the capture—that was gratifying. Even if some of the things they had to do were boring, or frustrating, or even painful, they wouldn’t dream of giving up. Their passion was enduring. In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
BEAST + THE SCIENCE OF GRIT
“By the last day of Beast, seventy-one cadets had dropped out. Grit turned out to be an astoundingly reliable predictor of who made it through and who did not. The next year, I returned to West Point to run the same study. This time, sixty-two cadets dropped out of Beast, and again grit predicted who would stay. In contrast, stayers and leavers had indistinguishable Whole Candidate Scores. I looked a littlecloser at the individual components that make up the score. Again, no difference. So, what matters for making it through Beast? Not your SAT scores, not your high school rank, not your leadership experience, not your athletic ability. Not your Whole Candidate Score. What matters is grit.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
WANT GRIT? REMEMBER: EFFORT COUNTS TWICE
“I have been working on a theory of the psychology of achievement since Marty scolded me for not having one. I have pages and pages of diagrams, filling more than a dozen lab notebooks. After more than a decade of thinking about it, sometimes alone, and sometimes in partnership with close colleagues, I finally published an article in which I lay down two simple equations that explain how you get from talent to achievement.
Here they are: talent x effort = skill ——————> skill x effort = achievement Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that matters, it’s incomplete. Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we can improve a skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
GRITTY PASSION = COMPASS (VS. FIREWORKS)
“What I mean by a passion is not just that you have something you care about. What I mean is that you care about the same ultimate goal in an abiding, loyal, steady way. You are not capricious. Each day, you wake up thinking of the questions you fell asleep thinking about. Youare, in a sense, pointing in the same direction, ever eager to take even the smallest step forward than to take a step to the side, toward some other destination. At the extreme, one might call your focus obsessive. Most of your actions derive their significance from their allegiance to your ultimate concern, your life philosophy. You have your priorities in order.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
HOW TO GROW YOUR GRIT (THE 4 PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSETS)
“In fact, when people drop out of things, they do so for a reason. Actually, they do so for different reasons. Any of the following four thoughts might go through your head right before you quit what you’re doing: ‘I’m bored.’ ‘The effort isn’t worth it.’ ‘This isn’t important to me.’ ‘I can’t do this, so I might as well give up.’ There’s nothing wrong—morally or otherwise—with thoughts like these. As I tried to show inthis chapter, paragons of grit quit goals, too. But the higher the level of the goal in question, the more stubborn they are about seeing it through. Most important, paragons of grit don’t swap compasses: when it comes to the one, singularly important aim that guides almost everything else they do, the very gritty tend not to utter the statements above. ...
Together, the research reveals the psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common. There are four. They counter each of the buzz-killers listed above, and they tend to develop, over the years, in a particular order.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
GRIT + WISE PARENTING (VS. NOT-SO-WISE PARENTING)
“Indeed, over the past forty years, study after carefully designed study has found that the children of psychologically wise parents fare better than children raised in any other kind of household. In one of Larry’s studies, for example, about ten thousand American teenagers completed questionnaires about their parents’ behavior. Regardless of gender, ethnicity, social class, or parents’ marital status, teens with warm, respectful, and demanding parents earned higher grades in school, were more self-reliant, suffered from less anxiety and depression, and were less likely to engage in delinquent behavior.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
YOU’RE A GRITTY GENIUS
“‘You’re no genius,’ my dad used to say when I was just a little girl. I realize now that he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me. If you define genius as being able to accomplish great things in life without effort, then he was right: I’m no genius, and neither is he.But if, instead, you define genius as working toward excellence, ceaselessly, with every element of your being—then, in fact, my dad is a genius, and so am I, and... if you’re willing, so are you.”
(End Quote)
Book Number 2
The Champion's Mind
How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive
by Jim Afremow
Quote #1
“Champion yourself. We all experience similar struggles and deal with demanding challenges in our pursuit of excellence, regardless of the sport or fitness activity. To be a champion, your true best self becomes key to personal and athletic greatness. You know, as we all do, that only those performers who think gold and never settle for silver will continue to strive for and reach their highest, or gold, level. A champion makes greatness happen, despite what may seem impossible odds. Of course most of us are not Olympians or professional athletes. But all of us can acquire a champion’s mind-set. Any athlete can learn to think like a champion. Every one of us can be peak performers in the game of life by achieving our own personal best. We can strive to be the best version of ourselves. It is possible for us to stay ‘professional’ whenever adversity strikes. It is possible to ingrain mental fortitude that drives us forward. And it is possible to take a championshipapproach.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
THE VISION OF A CHAMPION
“My favorite description of what excellence in the sports world looks like comes from Anson Dorrance, the legendary University of North Carolina women’s soccer coach. He was driving to work early one morning, and as he passed a deserted field, he noticed one of his players off in the distance doing extra training by herself. He kept driving, but he later left a note in her locker: ‘The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching.’ The young woman, Mia Hamm, would go on to become one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. Having a big dream—and a clear vision of what you will look like while pursuing competitive excellence—always inspires greatness. What is your dream goal? What does excellence in your game look like when you are fully dialed in and passionately pursuing your dream—becoming the best you can be in your sport? Make the description vivid and powerful enough to give you that burst of adrenaline when you need it, a burst that can only come from connecting completely with your heart’s true desire.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
LET’S DEFINE MENTAL TOUGHNESS
“Mental toughness does not entail clenching your teeth, trying harder, thinking more, straining your eyes to focus, or having someone scream ‘Be tough!’ at you. Mental toughness is the ability to remain positive and proactive in the most adverse of circumstances. Mental toughness is built on doing the thing that is hard over and over again, especially when you don’t feel like it. Push through on your down days when you are not feeling your best. Distraction, discomfort, and difficulties are no match for the champion.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
BEING UGLY BUT EFFECTIVE + HAVING A GOOD BAD DAY
“Take a minute right now to think about your performance when you did not believe a good or respectable outcome was possible but you still found a way to make it happen. There is beauty in being ugly but effective (UBE) or having a good bad day (GBD) while you are not at your finest. Keep your head in the game and grind it out.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
SAND IN YOUR HAND
“Achieving peak performance is like trying to keep a small pile of sand from slipping from your grip. If you hold it too tightly, the sand will be squeezed between your fingers. Likewise, if you hold it too loosely, the sand will slip through your grip. Holding the sand too tightly is analogous to caring too much about the outcome and trying too hard to achieve a result. Holding it too loosely is akin to caring too little and not being mentally disciplined. Most athletes would benefit from caring enough but not caring too much about the outcome in major competitions, so that they can let their talent be natural and unrestrained. ‘He who grasps loses,’ wrote Lao-tzu in the Tao te Ching.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
GOOD, BETTER, BEST <— YOUR CHAMPION JOURNAL
“How can you objectively evaluate your progress and build on your success? As a mechanism for sparking creativity and generating new ideas for improving your performance, debrief your game play on a regular basis. Evaluate the mental, technical, and tactical aspects. Specifically, ask yourself three questions: 1) What did I do that was good? 2) What needs to get better? 3) What changes should I make to become my best? This process will allow you to think broadly about each area of your game and then drill down to the details. Make this your Champion Journal.”
(End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
SUSTAINED OBSESSION
“Sustained obsession. Brad Alan Lewis and his rowing partner Paul Enquist won the gold medal in the double sculls at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, becoming the first U.S. rowers to capture gold since 1964 and the first U.S. doubles team to secure gold since 1932. For Lewis, high commitment equals sustained obsession. He explains how he went from good to gold medal in his book Wanted: Rowing Coach: ‘If anyone here is secretly dreaming of making the Olympics, I can tell you exactly how to do it: two words: Sustained Obsession. The obsession isn’t so hard. But keeping it sustained is a tough nut to crack.’”
“Excellence is not random. It is also more than a short-term ambition, accident, or accomplishment. It is developed by design and achieved by setting and tenaciously pursuing high, competitive goals. The greatest champions in history have all had a long-range vision and plan of what they wanted to accomplish in tandem with a complete daily devotion to their specialization. Having daily or weekly improvement goals to meet will help ensure that you are always working right.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
THE CHAMPION’S HONOR PLEDGE
“Have the boldness to pursue what you want most in both sports and life. If you have the courage to start, you will have the courage to finish. Make ‘Think gold and never settle for silver’ your life’s mantra and put it into daily action. Fully unfurl the potential of your life—both on and off the field—because your life is unique. Thinking this way is the ultimate victory for any champion. Now you are ready to take the champion’s honor pledge:
By my efforts, I will keep my body strong, my mind focused, and my determination unstoppable.
I resolve to compete in the present with power, purpose and passion.
I know that every sore muscle and drop of sweat is an investment in excellence.
I strive to be my best, nothing less, and joy will come from my striving.
True, pain always comes, but I can endure it.
My body wins when my mind refuses to give in.
In defeat, I will reflect and learn.
In victory, I will savor the glorious moment.
Tomorrow, my efforts always begin anew.”
(End Quote)
Book Number 3
The Art of Mental Training
A Guide to Performance Excellence
by DC Gonzalez
Quote #1
“Welcome to The Art of Mental Training. Sports Mental Training has been called the Science of Success. But make no mistake. If you imagine that the lessons here apply only to sports and athletes you’d be wrong. For it’s the Everyday Warrior, from all walks of life, and all types of scenarios, that stands to benefit immensely from the knowledge and techniques that lie ahead. No matter what you do, or whatever challenges you face, The Art of Mental Training can help take you to another level of performance, achievement, and personal success.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
WHY MENTAL TRAINING?
“I need you to recall an occasion when you performed at your best—and then remember a time when you were at your worst. Now when you look at those two performances, I want you to be honest with yourself and ask, what made the most difference between the two? Could it have been your mental state that made the most difference? …And that’s the important point: no matter what your game is, or what the challenge is, the difference between great performances and average performances is mostly mental. Once you reach a certain level of skill, it’s your mental skills that start making all the difference. The better they are, the better you will become—and the better your results will be.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
YOUR ATTITUDE
““A champion teaches himself the skill of turning things around inside his head,” I explained. “He learns how to look at a negative setback both as temporary, and even as an opportunity for positive change. He knows that things he can learn from his loss will make him even better, even stronger, in the long run. The Mental Warrior learns from his setbacks and doesn’t allow them to distract him from reaching his true potential.” “So keep your self-talk positive. Keep your outlook positive. By doing so, you give yourself the best chance to perform well. Take on your inner feelings with courage and determination; never allow a bad attitude to hold you back from achieving the level of personal success that you are capable of.”” (END QUOTE)
Quote #4
STOP THE NEGATIVE. FIRE OFF THE POSITIVE.
“He taught me to interrupt any negative self-talk the instant I noticed it and replace it by firing off positive self-talk. Things like: I’m fast, I’m focused, I’m good. He always said not to let negative thoughts get in your way. You have to cancel the negativity and feed your self-belief instead. This will improve your concentration, and lower your level of tension, which will help you perform better. Shutting down negative self-talk begins by interrupting it, and then instantly replacing it.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
IMAGINEERING “Imagineering — the technique of showing our minds how we want things to go, and a term first made famous by the legendary dreamer, Walt Disney. We should all take his advice and allow ourselves to practice sensory rich Imagineering. Champions use Imagineering prior to their events. It’s also often used by people in order to help them achieve successful completion of a project or an important goal over time. This simple practice has been proven to be so essential and so effective that the athlete who fails to practice this technique apparently never plays to his true potential. (Interestingly, the same results have been observed with actors and musicians as well.) For performance of any kind, mental preparation is as important as physical training. So, if you leave “Imagineering” out of your preparation, you will be hurting yourself and helping your opponent.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
LACKING MOTIVATION? SET SOME GOALS!
“Warrior/Champions set out to turn their dreams into reality by taking action through goal setting… Mental athletes are goal-oriented. They have vision. When an athlete complains of lacking motivation, you can be sure that it’s almost always caused by goals that fail to inspire him to action. Goals serve to keep you on target. They increase the desire to achieve…
While setting your own, private goals, be sure that they are both challenging and realistic. Slightly out-of-reach goals are best: inspiring hard work, yet still attainable with dedicated effort. Goals need to be set neither too high, nor too easy or low—which would defeat their very purpose. Goals should be written down and reviewed frequently. Goals should come in the form of daily goals, monthly goals and annual goals, and remember that what you are striving for is progress rather than perfection. Believe me, as you begin to focus on meaningful, specific goals, the power of your hidden reserves will be unleashed and good things will begin to happen.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON: SELF-BELIEF “As the sun hazed into the sea, I remembered so many other sunset lessons over the years. Perhaps Leo-tai was remembering them too, for he suddenly said, “From amongst all our lessons, what one most important thing do you think I would always want you to remember? If there was just one, what do you think it might be? So many things, I thought… I thought hard. Learning to never give in, not allowing negativity, self-discipline, staying in the present, control of anger, control of fear, Imagineering, to believe in my dreams. And then I remembered: “Self-belief is what gets everything going.” “Self-belief,” I told him. Our eyes met and he glowed back at me.” (End Quote)
Book Number 4
The Mindful Athlete
Secrets to Pure Performance
by George Mumford
Quote #1
“When Michelangelo was asked how he created his masterpieces, he replied that all he did was chip away to get to the masterpiece that was already inside. I believe we’re all chipping away to get to that masterpiece, even those of us who grew up in the ghetto, on the wrong side of the tracks. We all have a divine spark within us, but we’ve either crushed it, created an ingenious system for hiding out, or devisedways of being that make us feel separate. I now regard each person I meet as a caterpillar in a chrysalis. In order to become butterflies, we have to break our way into freedom and transformation. Mindfulness is a tool we can use to do this in the most skillful way. ... What I offer in this book is a synthesis of mindfulness principles that fall under the aegis of what I call the Five Superpowers. These Superpowers are my personal spin on the Buddha’s Eightfold Path and on his teaching of the Five Spiritual Faculties: faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
THE FIVE SUPERPOWERS
“The Five Superpowers are mindfulness, concentration, insight, right effort, and trust. These spiritual superpowers are interconnected and they work together. Buddhism sometimes calls the first three powers—mindfulness, concentration, and insight—the threefold training. Ourunconscious mind contains the seeds of all these energies. You can cultivate these three energies throughout the day, in whatever activity you’re engaged. Mindfulness, concentration, and insight contain each other. If you’re very mindful, then you have concentration and insight in your mindfulness. Generating these energies is the heart of meditation practice. They help you live every moment of life deeply. They bring you joy and happiness and help you to handle your own suffering and the suffering in the people around you. The fourth power, right effort, or diligence, is the energy that makes us steadfast in our practice. Cognitive function improves when we have a positive state of mind. Bringing diligence to our practice of mindfulness is a great way to cultivate positive mind-states. But when we practice sitting or walking meditation in a way that causes our body or mind to suffer, that isn’t right effort because our effort isn’t based on our understanding. The last of the Five Powers is trust. It can also be seen as faith or confidence, but the way I like to look at it is as courage. Having the courage to delve into the unknown and trust what is found there makes the practice of mindfulness and other powers possible.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
THE SPACE BETWEEN STIMULUS AND RESPONSE
“Think about the eye of a hurricane, or the calm still center in the middle of a cyclone. No matter how intense the storm or what’s swept up in its gale-force winds, that calm, blue center is always there. This is the metaphor I like to use when talking about the space between stimulus and response. We all have this quiet center within us. Mindfulness reconnects us to this center space, where we fully experience the present moment and have access to the transcendent wisdom that’s often associated with conscious flow. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, neurologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl famously described it this way: ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’”
(End Quote)
Quote #4
1,300 3-POINTERS = INTENTION + PAYING THE PRICE
“Every high-performing mindful athlete knows that if you want to achieve something, there’s a good chance that you can, no matter what, if—and this is a big if—you’re willing to pay the price. You not only have to focus on your intention, but you also have to be willing to get up early in the morning and do the same thing thousands and thousands of times—and then another thousand times—with intention. Which leads me to deliberate practice. ... When I worked with Kobe Bryant, he was making about thirteen hundred three-pointers a day in the off-season when he was working on his three-point shot.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
ROMANCING YOUR DISCOMFORT ZONE
“Our bodies like to be in homeostasis. We like to be balanced. Life is hard enough—we want to be comfortable! But, again, to get better and improve our game on and off the court, we need to move out of our comfort zones. That doesn’t mean you should be so far out of your comfort zone that you can’t function well. Our bodies work best when we push them in small increments. If we push ourselves too far, eustress can become distress. We have to really pay attention, because they can manifest the same symptoms. Eustress is achieved through moderation, sticking to the middle way, and not going to extremes. ... Moving out of your comfort zone through experiencing eustress is a continuous incremental process of romancing your discomfort zone. It’s not like you get to a certain level and then stay there. Things are always either going forward or backward; they’re not staying static. If you are comfortable where you are and you just want to stay comfortable, that’s fine, but that isn’t the way to pursue excellence and wisdom.”
“You can’t push yourself so far out of your comfort zone that your body breaks down or that you ultimately give up because you can’t sustain your own self-imposed pressure.”
“Their comfort zones were like a horizon, always moving forward in front of them as they approached them.”
(End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
CULTIVATING SELF-EFFICACY
“It’s been my experience with all the athletes I’ve worked with, from the Lakers and the Bulls, to girls’ soccer teams, to weekend warriors, that while there are always calamities, extreme circumstances can make you stronger. This is what’s called having a strong sense of self-efficacy: the ability to tell yourself that no matter what happens, you will take everything as a challenge, not a curse. You’ll rise to the occasion and say, ‘Okay, the going is tough but this is going to be great!’ Self-efficacy is the ability to see yourself as capable. It’s a core mental strength. Self-efficacy is cultivated when we know ourselves well enough to work through whatever internal obstacles we have, whether that’s a negative self-image, an ingrained sense of defeat or other issues. Self-efficacy, or stress hardiness, is the galvanizing force behind what I call the three Cs: Commitment to your growth and development; Control over how you respond to stressors; andviewing every crisis or pressure as a Challenge. These three Cs are mental and emotional pillars of wisdom that help us increase our performance, effectively field whatever fastball might come hurtling our way, and stay in flow.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
DEEP LISTENING
“Some people say that they don’t know what their intention or purpose is, but often they simply haven’t spent enough time listening to themselves carefully and in silence. Deep Listening is very useful here. Deep Listening is the practice of stopping and listening without judgment or advice. Before you can listen deeply to someone else, you need to begin by deeply listening to yourself. Sit down, clear your mind, and ask yourself in silence: What do I really want? What is my life for? Intention will emerge if you go deep enough. Nearly every single elite athlete or successful individual I’ve worked with had intention and a clear sense of purpose. They knew their charter, their reason for existence.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
THE PATH OF THE MINDFUL ATHLETE
“The more you practice mindfulness and the more often you access conscious flow, the more you feel that spirit of love. Because in some respects, the two are connected to that same big ‘Something.’ The more you feel that greater spirit of love, the less room there is for distraction. There is no room for concerns about being good enough or better than so-and-so, for all the concerns about what other people will think or say in the future, or how you did or what happened in the past. There is no room for any negative self-talk and distracting chatter, or for feeding the wolves of your hindrances. Instead, you are flooded with consciousness and are fully and wholly concentrated on the here and now. This is the experience every athlete has when he or she is fully in the Zone. Sometimes we call this ‘being on fire.’ All distractions are burned away. This is pure performance at its best. This, ultimately, is the path of the mindful athlete.” (End Quote)
There's some goodness on Mental Toughness. I don't know about you, but the evidence is pretty convincing, if you're not training your mind, in some way or form, you are at a disadvantage if competing against someone who does. Albert Einstein comes to mind every time I finish one of these solo podcasts, quote, "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know."
Well, that concludes another episode of the hockey journey podcast. I can’t thank you enough for stopping by and listening. I hope you enjoyed this segment on Mental Toughness and are maybe interested to learn a little more and see if you can strengthen your mental training a bit. One last thing, If you think there’s someone in your circle of family and friends that might like this episode as well, please share it with just one person, it will help me in growing this hockey community.
Again, I appreciate you being here, don’t forget to subscribe, rate or submit a review, I hope to see you back here soon, and do me a favor, make someone close to you smile today. All the best my friends!!
