InGoal Magazine April 2012 - Summer Camp Edition : Page 70
A DRILL FOR MENTAL TOUGHNESS: Concentrating on an object T here are concrete exercises you can do to improve your mental strength. This one is designed to help you clear your mind by focusing on a puck. Practice this exercise a few times a day. Progressively and gradually it improves the ability to concentrate overall during your game. Ken DeNardo photo 1. Grab a puck and take it to your 4. Imagine the object, put the puck quiet place. Choose a concentration down, and focus your mind and eyes word, like “PUCK” for example. on it. See the puck as fully as you Look at your puck and repeat your can so that its smallest detail will concentration word. This helps stand out in your mind. Know that keep the mind from wandering. puck. Say to yourself the “puck is 2. Examine the puck. Now begin to MINE.” Don’t try to over power the examine it visually in every detail. puck. As you relax, simply keep your Look at the puck’s surface. Is it eye on the puck, and you will find rough or smooth? Does it have that it will come to you. You must seams or printing on it? Are there maintain something of a passive starch marks? Look at its colors attitude in this process, allowing and the way the light and shadows the object of your concentration to fall on it’s surface. Don’t try and enter your mind fully and not simply stop yourself from blinking. Relax. be something you are studying. 3. Feel the object, pick up the puck, When you concentrate, you will and feel its texture, turn it around, find that this seemingly mysterious and look at it from various angles. process happens quite naturally. 5. Get the feeling. When your concentration breaks, as it must, say to yourself: “I have been concentrating on this puck. This is what it feels like to be concentrating. I am relaxed, I feel good, and my attention is totally focused on the puck. This is concentration. Look back at the PUCK. Remember: “The puck is mine” 6. Say the concentration word again: “PUCK.” Say it to yourself, look at it and concentrate. The puck is mine. Repeat it to yourself: “The puck is mine, and nobody is going to have this puck.” 7. Then relax. 70 InGoal Magazine April 2012 Jonathan quick has shown laser-like focus in putting together a Vezina-worthy season in 2011-2012. Ken DeNardo photo
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