The Psychology Of Goaltending
We hear this a lot, but we don’t always take the time to fully understand everything that goes into the psychology of goaltending. This article is going to attempt to break this down to very simple concepts.
Let’s start with confidence. Confidence is the absolute number one priority in playing at your best. You need to believe, at a subconscious level, that you are good and that you have the ability to stop the puck in every situation that you face. You have to completely believe in yourself and your ability to play at the level you are at. You need to be completely void of all self-doubt and second-guessing. Your internal thoughts need to be constantly positive. You need to build on each success that you have. This starts in practice. You need to take practice very seriously. You need to build off each success that you have in practice. Most importantly, when you make a mistake, or when a goal is scored, you need to look at it as a learning event. Spend a moment thinking about what went wrong and what should have been done instead. Visualize mentally exactly what you should have done then let it go. This is very important. You cannot get frustrated, down on yourself or angry when a learning event occurs. Whether it occurs in a practice or in a game, look at it objectively. If it happens in a game, even if everyone on your team, everyone in the audience, and even your coach gets frustrated with you, you must be able to tune all of this out. Worrying about all of that does you absolutely no good. Learn what you can from it, and then let it go. Concentrate on the next play, and focus on doing your best. If negative thoughts enter your mind, let them drift right on through and let them go on their way. Replace them with positive thoughts and focus on the moment, not the past or what might happen in the future. Focus on what is happening right at that moment and do your job.
On the other hand, when you have a successful event, you should build off of it. When you stop a breakaway or when you make a save, notice the feelings that you have. Feel your confidence building. Use that confidence and concentrate on getting ready for the next play. Notice every success and feel good about each one, but learn from and then let go of any learning event.
The next concept in the psychology of goaltending that is important to understand is your internal self-talk. The average person has over 60,000 thoughts a day, and most of those thoughts, for many people, are negative. Learning how to talk positively to yourself at all times is very important, but also takes real hard work and effort to learn how to do it. You need to work on this constantly - not just when you are playing goalie. You need to learn how to talk positively to yourself all the time. It is recommended that the first step you take is to start listening to your self-talk. Notice every thought that you think through out the day. You need to become aware of what you are saying to yourself. What you think is what you become.
For example, if you drop a plate of food and you say to yourself, “I’m such a klutz!” You are reinforcing that feeling about yourself and the more you say it, the more that becomes your identity. You will continue to be clumsy and become more of a klutz if you don’t change your self-talk. That is just one example, but if you make the effort to listen to your self-talk through out the day, you will likely hear similar negative statements. The reverse is true. Say you are going in to take an important test, and you say to yourself, “I am great at taking tests!” You will continue to reinforce that positive belief about yourself, and you will continue to be a great test taker. You will have a low level of anxiety during the test and thus will be able to perform at your best. After you become aware of your self-talk, you need to take steps to start to make your self-talk positive. You need to start to feed your subconscious with the positive statements that will build your confidence and help you to become the person, and the goalie, that you want to become.
The subconscious mind accepts whatever you feed it. The more you feed it the same thought, the more you will believe it. Most people don’t pay attention to the diet they are feeding their subconscious. They are giving up control over their belief system and who they become. This can be avoided if you make the effort to feed your subconscious a steady diet of the exact thoughts and beliefs that you want it to consume. You do have control over what you believe about yourself if you work at it.
How do you work at it? Well, you need to first determine the exact thoughts and beliefs that you want to program into your subconscious. Write out all the beliefs that you want to have about yourself and about your goaltending. Write them out as 8 to 15 word affirmations. The shorter the better. Long affirmations will take a lot longer to install. They should be written in the first person and in the present tense. In other words, they should read like this: “I always play my best against the toughest teams.” or “I have a great butterfly.”
Every day, you should read your affirmations 3 times each, stated 3 different ways. The first time, you should state the affirmation with no emotion. The second time you should add some emphasis to the object of your affirmation. For example, the second time you read the affirmation, you should state it like this (emphasis on the bold words): I always play my best against the toughest teams. The third time, you should state it firmly with confidence.
Hang the affirmations on the mirror in the bathroom and read them when you are getting ready in the morning. Carry them with you and read them another time when you have a few minutes alone later in the day. Finally, read them before going to bed. This really works. You need to do this consistently every day for a long period of time. Start with a goal of doing this every day for 3 weeks. By this time, it should become a habit. Keep going. The changes at the subconscious level will be gradual, but it will happen. Eventually, the changes will be significant. You will start to hear yourself thinking these thoughts automatically at times through out the day.
In addition to the daily affirmation exercise, you need to also start noticing random negative self-talk and learn to stop the negative statements and replace them with the positive versions. As soon as you notice a negative statement start, you could say to yourself, cancel and then state the positive version. This will also become a habit and will bring great results to your subconscious programming over time. Make the effort and commit to doing these exercises every day. This is one of the most important keys to your mental training.
The final aspect of the psychology of goaltending that is to be to covered is goal setting. If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll never know if you have arrived there. People don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan. You must have a roadmap to follow in order to achieve your full potential as a goalie, no matter what level you play at. Don’t be afraid to set big goals for your goaltending career. (I call these BHAG’s - Big Hairy Audacious Goal) It is better to shoot for the stars and end up dragging your feet in the trees, than it is to shoot for the trees and end up dragging your feet in the mud.
The first step in setting goals for your goaltending career is to decide where you ultimately want to end up. Your goal might be to someday be the starting goalie for your high school team. It might be to make a college/university team. If you feel you have what it takes to someday play Division I or even professional hockey, then set that as your ultimate goal. Now, in order for you to achieve your ultimate goal, you need to believe in your heart that you will achieve it. You can’t just decide to believe this. It has to be a belief in your subconscious mind. The way that you get your subconscious mind to actually believe that you will achieve your goal is to break your goal down into believable steps that you will take along the way.
Work backwards from your ultimate goal. Let’s say your goal is to someday play Division I college Hockey. Let’s say you have 5 years until you will be at the age to play at that level. You need to set up a 4-year goal that if you achieve, will bring you as close as possible to reaching your ultimate goal. For example, your 4-year goal might be to become the starting goalie for your high school team. Next, decide what you need to do each year over the next 3 years to get yourself as close as possible to your 4-year goal. By my junior year, I need to be splitting time with the senior goalie. In year 2, you may set a goal that you become the backup goalie for your high school team and you see some significant playing time. In year 1, you may set the goal to make your high school team as one of the goalies, and that you’ll work hard every day to develop your skills to where they need to be in order to play at the high school level.
Finally, break down your first year into monthly goals, then weekly goals, and finally daily goals.
Your subconscious mind will be able to believe that if you achieve your daily goals, you’ll automatically achieve your weekly goals. If you achieve your weekly goals, you’ll automatically achieve your monthly goals, and so on.
A couple of great quotes are:
What your mind can perceive you can achieve.
If you believe you can’t then you are right. If you believe you can, then you are right.
The final and most important step in achieving your goals is to put them down on paper and read them at least 2 times every day. Do this for 40 days, and you’ll be amazed at how effective this is. This should become a habit and you should keep reading it. You’ll likely need to measure, monitor, and adjust your goals as you go along. Rewrite your goal statement any time you feel it is necessary. You’ve got to make the effort to put your goals down on paper and read them every day. This will be the fuel that powers the engine that will take you to where you want to go. This will be your motivation to consistently work hard every day. Your subconscious will get involved and start to work magic in your life.
Although there are other aspects related to the psychology of goaltending, it is important to focus on the aspects that are covered in this article as a great start to your mental training. If you try to learn and do too many complex aspects in the beginning, you could become discouraged and give up. Focus on the aspects that are covered and you will be on your way to building a solid foundation that you can continue to build off of.
