Shaun Smith is the founder of Absolute Mental Training and provides The Goalie Guild with a weekly column that is posted every Tuesday. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email him at ssmith@absolutementaltraining.com! 

:: TAKE IT TO THE GRAVE! :: 

Hockey is a game that is played at high speeds with a lot of emotions. One thing that all goaltenders must be conscious of is their thought process and the emotions that they evoke. A goaltender can lose control of their emotions, which often yields a poor performance by a negative thought that stays in their head. A goaltender that can quickly and efficiently get rid of a negative thought will be much more successful than many of their goaltender counterparts.

Many of the clients that I work with can get caught up by their negative thoughts and get stuck in a vicious cycle of negative thought, that produces a negative emotion, that produces a negative thought, and on and on. This thought-feeling cycle will then start to gain momentum to the point where the goaltender looks like those guys that are chasing the ball of cheese down the mountain side.

You don’t have to be that goaltender that loses control of your emotions if you are responsible in controlling your thoughts effectively. There are many different techniques for goaltenders to stop their negative thoughts before they spiral out of control. One technique that I like to use with my goaltenders is what I call “Take It to the Grave.”

Take it to the Grave is a thought stopping technique that, when used effectively, can allow the goaltender to mentally put to rest their negative thoughts and move on with their lives. Taking it to the grave works in two different ways which can be effective for the goaltender.

The first way to use the technique of taking it to the grave is to use the powerful tool of imagery to imagine taking your thought and burying it six feet under the ice where it can have no effect on your current emotional state.

Imagine seeing yourself digging a hole in the corner of the ice where you take your negative thought and bury it so that it is no longer a part of your thought process. Once you have stopped the thought replace the previous negative thought with a positive thought and you are on your way to controlling your thoughts and emotions.

The success of this technique is often the result of a goaltender that is willing to give it a try as well as the goalie that is able to make their imagery realistic.

The second way which you can use taking it to the grave is to allow yourself the opportunity to constructively release your negative thoughts when struggling to compete at the top of the game or when in a slump. In this technique, the goaltender will actually find some kind of material that they can carve into and write their negative thought onto your negative thoughts tombstone.

Once this activity is finished, the athlete takes the thought and buries it deep in the ground with the tombstone. Many times, athletes who are struggling can be found holding onto their negative thoughts. By holding onto their negative thoughts, they end up with a lot of negative emotions that they have no control over. This loss of control is one of the key factors to the helpless feeling of not having control over the athlete’s game. Burying the thought allows the athlete the chance to rid their mind of this helpless feeling.

An athlete’s success in their sport can often come down to the athlete’s ability to control their emotions. When an athlete can disturb a negative thought quickly and effectively the will be able to get back to stopping pucks and create a positive thought-emotion cycle which will allow them to feel good about their game and lead to success.

Shaun Smith is the founder of Absolute Mental Training and provides The Goalie Guild with a weekly column that is posted every Tuesday. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email him at ssmith@absolutementaltraining.com!