This article will teach you how to improving focus in youth sports hockey. Whenever an athlete steps inside the arena, the loud roar of the people cheering either for their team or their opponent or coaches yelling at them at the middle of the game can get them out of focus, but it is critcal for them to keep their minds fixed on their goal.
Improving Focus in Sports is one of the most important parts of mental training that should be trained during practice so you are ready before playing in the real game.
This is Part 5 of a series from an interview with Jamie McKinven, who is the author of the book, So You Want Your Kid To Play Pro Hockey?
In this video, Jamie tells us how he made his ability to focus a key to his success in playing hockey.
Focus is one of the biggest things you need to master in hockey. It is being able to always look at a situation and slow things down for yourself and to break things down into compartments.
When I went down to Clarkston University, my first year, I had never played in front of a crowd bigger than say about 200.
In a Junior A League you had a small crowd and it was usually just family. So when we were going down to Wisconsin to play in front of 11,000 fans. It was a really big thing.
It is very easy to become overwhelmed by that and our coach understood that. Every week before the season, he would invite all the students that he could get a hold of to come and fill up our arena while we practiced.
He would get the school band to play and that was forty plus people. It would get loud and crazy in there and really created a game situation feeling.
We would practice through that and just get acclimated to that type of atmosphere, so that when we did go out and play in our first game it wasn’t a culture shock and you weren’t overwhelmed by what was happening on the other side.
Someone told me early on that your brain can only process two things at a time when you are playing a sport.
Your biggest priority has to be the task you are performing, your motor skills and the things you are doing with your body. That’s the process of your mind and it keeps telling your muscles what to do.
The second thing will be what your teammates are telling you on the ice, what they are communicating to you about the plays that are happening. That makes the game easier.
If you hear a screaming coach yelling at you from the bench, that is going to create a third element for your body to process. Now your mind is trying to determine how to prioritize.
Now all the sudden you throw in the crowd and the other team players that are trying to mess with you and get you off your game. So now you got five factors and your mind is trying to prioritize it.
The biggest thing when teaching your mind to block out those negative forces you dodn’t need, is to focus on only two things — what you’re body needs to do to perform and what your teammates are communicating to you.”
Get Jamie’s book “So You Want Your Kid to Play Pro Hockey” by clicking here. It lays it all on the line to enlighten hockey fans, parents, critics, arm-chair coaches and players alike about a world beyond slap shots and penalties.