Sticking to the training program and some good news

It's been a few weeks now since I wrote but I've been a busy bee sort of speak.

I'm at week nine of fifteen of my training program and i'm happy to say that i'm sticking to
it. In total, I've just missed one work out so far (due to work) and when i'm not exercising,
i'm stretching. And I've noticed some differences. My hips don't feel as sore as they use to, my legs feels stronger than ever and i'm noticing some small improvements on my upper body strengths as well. Noticing the results sure makes me more motivated to continue doing this.

Right now, I feel proud that i'm so far into the program. I've given up before, for no reason what so ever. And even though I've noticed some better results doing the program before, I've always wondered what the results would be doing it full-time. I guess won't really know until I hit the ice but i'm excited to see it.

As for the incoming news I wrote about earlier, i'm happy to say that it worked out as I hoped to.
I'm going to leave my rec hockey team Gryta HC to play for Sala Hockey in the Swedish fifth-tier league. It's the lowest level of competitive hockey in Sweden but it's a big moment for me, since I never thought i'd be playing as much as I do five years ago. It's a big deal for me.

I'm thinking I should be excited over my head over this, but i'm not really. Sure, i'm excited but I also feel a bit nervous and anxious. And I don't know why really. I've tried finding out why but I just can't seem to find a legit reason. Fear of failure perhaps? Stepping out of my comfort zone? I don't know.
I got some mental obstacles to get past. But since I've overcome harder things before, I'm pretty confident that I will get past this as well. Hard work is all it takes.

Pre season workout and some good news(perhaps)

I've moved into week two out of fifteen in my pre season workout and it feels good to have moved back to the daily routines of eating and exercising again.
I'm currently focusing on stability, which is the first step in Maria Mountain's Rapid Response Goalie Training. This particular workout is a great combination of stretching, massaging and core/back exercises put in to about a 40-minute workout program.

The thing I like about this program is that the exercises are fairly simple to do. But at least in my case, the body responds well to them. After about two weeks you can feel the difference slightly.

The hips and back mainly feel very relaxed and the pain you might had is either less apparent or gone completely. I usually feel sore in my hips during the later part of the season and about a month after it ends and these exercises always reset them to zero. 

Right now, my motivation is high to finish the training program. But I'm gonna hit slumps where I just want to sit on the couch and play video games. But I've set up goals for the next season that I want to achieve and that makes it easier to get motivated not to slip to the lazy side. That is the main key in my opinion - no goals, no motivator. 

My main motivator now is getting physically (and mentally of course) prepared as I can for the 2015-2016 season. With the news I got on Sunday, I have to be if it all works out as I hope to. I'll write about it as soon as I know for sure. Right now, I'm keeping this positive vibe I have now going and continuing with my workouts.

2014-2015 Recap

It's been a while again but it's time to sum up my season and reflect on how the journey's been for me so far. It's been quite a ride and I'm eager what next season brings in terms of challenges.

I can first of all say that my development this year has been greater than my previous seasons. Credit to that goes to Sala Hockey, a fifth-tier team here in Sweden, that I practiced with all season alongside my regular team. It's a couple of levels over my amateur team that I play with. Most of all, the skill in accuracy and decision making is way higher than I'm used to and I got to admit, I was lit up in the beginning.

But I adapted my game after a while, learning to be more patient and anticipating the shots. 
And I can say after thinking back on my time with the team that I at least didn't make a fool out of myself. I was asked to join the team on a ski trip last weekend and met with the coaches there. He asked me if I was going to play next season. If that meant that he wanted me on the team I don't know but it sure sounded like it. We'll see how things play out.

If I do make it it full time with the team, I surely have to compete with two other goalies, both who are pretty darn good. I got see a couple of games last season and comparing both of them with the rest of the league, I can say that both are among the better goalies. That's both intimidating and exiting at the same time. I think I can get up to their level. I just have to work hard. 

As for my amateur team, it was both a good and a bad season. The team didn't go as well as last season. We struggled from time to time and pretty much limped our way into the playoffs. And in the quarter finals, we got beaten 10-7. We didn't stand a chance really.

There's a lot of reasons why we didn't have the same success as last season. First of all, we lost two key players to injury and work commitment. And although we replaced them with some decent players, they were unable to make the same impact. And we had some problems with people not showing up for practices. In a roster with 30 players you would think that it would not hurt with a couple of players gone, but with nearly half of the team gone it really started to hurt us. We couldn't get any consistency in the lines and lost many games because of it. 

Personally, I started pretty slow but got better as the season progressed, the reason being what I wrote about earlier. But I don't know why, but I lost the coaches confidence in the later part of the season, and was benched for a couple of games. I knew I was better than the other goalie. I kept a positive attitude. I don't know what else I could have done more.
But that's the way things are sometimes I guess. Or they saw something in the other goalie that I failed to notice.

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the season but I wanna find out which level I can push myself up to. That's why I'm thinking of leaving my current team. If I don't make the Sala roster, i'm thinking of looking around for another fifth-tier team or perhaps another amateur team where I can push myself even more. 

We'll see. Right now, i'm actually looking forward to start my pre season work out.
I'm going for four times a week, with butterfly stretching every day as a goal.
I will start next week and will write about my progress, feelings and (hopefully not) my struggles with it.

Just a little recap

Okay, so i'm back from the dead. 
I've been so busy these past months I don't know even where to begin explaining what i've been doing. But i'm in need of writing some stuff again and getting some weight off my shoulders, which is mainly the purpose of this blog.

This fall has not been good so far hockey wise. The team has been struggling and haven't found a way to win and we're currently last in our league. For me personally, i've been struggling with frustration and anger on the ice for almost the entire season. I let my temper get the better of me and it hasn't served me well. I started the season premiere, allowing eight goals and was put on the bench for the next two games.

That frustrated me a lot as I wanted to play, even though I deep down felt I wasn't going to perform well. But I swallowed it and kept on practicing and simplifying my game ever more. But it wasn't until last week until I started to get back to my game again and playing as I should. And it led to me getting the start last Saturday.

Well, it was mainly because the guy who's been starting lately couldn't play, but I took the chance and played quite well despite us losing the game in a shootout. I wasn't happy with the loss of course but I was glad that I pulled myself together and put up a decent performance. I decided that the fear and anxiety wouldn't take over 
and it didn't. I wasn't going to let my teammates down and myself for that matter.


The fun thing about life is that you never stop learning. And the thing that I learned from Saturday was that I can indeed conquer my negative thoughts and keep them from making me effective. But I still got a lot to learn on the mental aspect on the game. And i'm getting a lot of good tips from this book:

I've read it once and is on my second read at the moment. It gives a lot of good tips of how to prepare mentally and to keep your focus during games and such. But there's no straight way of getting there. We are all different persons and my experience with this book is that some things work very well and some things don't. You really have to try it for yourself and figure things out. But if you're eager to learn then it's a a great read. I've learned a lot about myself from reading it. Give it a shot!

Pre-game preparation

Last week I got an e-mail from a opposing team leader asking me if I'd like to sub for them in an exhibition game on Sunday(last Sunday to be clear). At first I said no, since I figured I was done for the season. But then again, how could I say no to a last shot of hitting the ice before summer break? So after some thinking, I said yes.

Since I was subbing for the team that allowed most goals in the league this season, my predictions of the game was that I was probably going to see a lots of shot and not getting much help from my defense. So I did little to prepare myself for this game. I just wanted to go out and have fun. The only thing I did was to sharpen my skates and stretch a little on the same day the game was.
Since the game was at 19:00, I spend the day doing some errands, without any thoughts of the game what so ever.
I started thinking about the game only about an hour before face-off when my teammate picked me up in front of the house. I felt pretty relaxed before but had enough focus as I still am the type who always want to do a good job, no matter who I play for.

The game didn't start well. I think allowed three goals on the first five-six shots I faced but I was pretty much left alone on all of them so I let them go pretty fast. And then I just shut the other team. Well, almost. I allowed a goal early in the second, but held the fort for the next 30 minutes(we played 35 minute periods with rolling time).
and stopped four straight penalty shots(there were penalty shots instead of penalties). I stepped into the zone and stayed there. It was an awesome feeling. We won that game 10-5 and I was named the first star.

Of course, five goals against isn't what you call good perhaps but I didn't care. It was how I felt during and after the game that mattered. I felt like this game helped me a bit of solving my pre-game puzzle. I've been trying different approaches now with various results and have come to the conclusion that all-day pre-game focus is out of the question from now on.

For those who haven't read my first post in this blog, I wrote about draining myself mentally before a big game by spending the entire day focusing on it and ended up playing terrible in a time where the team needed me the most. I was exhausted by the time game started and "wasn't there". Before this game, I was alert and felt sharp and when the game started I was active, played the angles and barely gave up a rebound. I was in my comfort zone again.

I think the valuable lesson I learned from this was simply not to over-think stuff. My mind does simply not benefit from thinking too much about the upcoming game. I think less is more, at least in my case. And also perhaps the most important thing - not to forget to have fun out there.

I'd like to hear some other opinions regarding this. How do you prepare for a game? Do you spend all day or just a an hour or two? Or perhaps you don't do anything?

One hour of therapy

Today was an unproductive and right out shitty day. I'm not really going to in depth of why because
I don't want this blog to be a place where I go on and on how shitty my life is and how I feel sorry for myself.
That's just not me. My life is great because I try my best make it so. But some days, there's just stuff that gets too much. Anyways...

After a bit of studying today and five hours at work, I headed off to the rink for my final practice for this season.
My head was really messy from this day's "this really changes the whole perspective" news and I really needed to get my mind off things. But my terrible mood didn't change when I got to the dressing room, which it usually does. I usually got my mind of packing up my equipment, preparing it to put on and perhaps chirp a teammate or two. But today, I was silent, obviously having my thoughts in another place. It annoyed me. I got even more eager here to get on to the ice and doing my routines that I do every time; take three laps, stretching near the boards with the other goaltenders on the team and head for my crease to prepare it for the warm-up shots.

Stepping out on the ice and doing my routines didn't help either. I was still not focused. But as soon as the first warm-up shot game, with me gloving it, I was completely focused on the stopping the puck. And I did it well, in fact way better than I use to. I'm usually kinda relaxed on warm-ups, perhaps too relaxed and perhaps allowing more goals than I should. But I think I allowed just two goals tonight. That really set the tone for the rest of the practice, or I should really say shinny because that what it turned into. When 25 guys shows up, including goaltenders, and it's the last practice of the season, you're not to keen on focusing on details.
So we played for a about an hour. I allowed one bad goal and the other three wasn't really my fault.
I left a bit early when I felt my hips aching (been having issues with them for a while) and I was really relaxed and felt happy again.  

And that's the beauty with doing something you really love. You easily get your mind off bad things and other stuff that worries you, at least for a while. For me hockey is really one hour of pure therapy. It's like having a friend that always pats your back and say: "Everything is going to be just fine."

And that is really how I feel right now.

Everything is just fine, at least for a while.

Disappointments and expectations

As long as I've been able to, I've always loved to write. I might not write on a consistent basis, but I always come back to it one way or another. But don't think i'm considering a career in that profession. I'm too restless for that.
Now, let's get down to it shall we?

I'll start telling a little bit of history. It's not unique in anyway nor spectacular. But I think a lot of people will recognize themselves in my story.
My first career ended as with most people - early. I started playing organized hockey when I was eight, started playing goal at nine and quit when I was fourteen. The organization I played for considered me not to be good enough for them anymore as they were narrowing down the team. Although I'm in no way bitter about it now (I'm no man who holds a grudge) I still remember the feeling to this day.

I was disappointed, to say the least. To hear from the team that you've played for so many years and learned to love that you had to look for another team was heartbreaking and quit right away. It was something that I come to regret a few years later, but hey, you can't make the right call every time.

Let's fast forward a couple of years, 2009 to be precise. It was the year I picked up the game again after a 12-year absence. And from playing a couple of times a year, the team I played for (and still do) started practicing regularly two times a week. And it's been a joyful ride to see the team with a bunch of different types of players from all levels grow from a punching-bag to a team that can compete against most amateur teams.

Personally, i'm coming off one of my best season ever since I picked up hockey again. Statistically, my record was 6-2-0, including the playoffs, with a 4.65 GAA (Goals Against Average) . Okay, comparing to pro's, that GAA is horrible but in our league it's pretty decent. We battled our way to the best record in the regular season and went into the playoffs as one of the top contender for the league champi0nship.

Now, something I've been struggling with earlier seasons is my mental game. I've been very nervous prior to game and i've let that bring out the worst in me. But this season, I've managed to focus on the positive things, thanks to some training from John Haley on The Goalie's mind. And when I went into the playoffs, I had the same positive feeling. But when I stepped into the ice for the first game, it all went south. I played horrible. Gave up rebound. Making wrong decisions. Battling the puck. We managed to win the game 11-5 and had our ticket secured to the finals. But I knew it wasn't thanks to me. The guys bailed me out.

And when I went into the finals, I've managed to re-focus again. I felt good. Felt like we had a chance. I wasn't going to be beaten easy. I was ready for battle. And it all went south. Again. We got blown out 10-2 and I left the ice midway through the third, being a goal away from a complete meltdown. I was frustrated. Angry.

When the game ended, I thought back of that day in June 1998 when I got cut from the team.
It was the same feeling, but the one thing I was disappointed in was myself. I've let my team down.
They expected me to play well. To give them a chance to win.

Now, this isn't me dwelling over it now or anything like that. It was just what I felt at that time.
Almost a month has past since then and I've learned my lesson - never set too high expectations on yourself.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't have expectations or goals. Those things are important in my opinion.
But at least in my case, the expectations I had for myself put an important thing in the shadow - having fun.
I was so eager performing well for my teammates that I ended up disappointing myself instead.
I forgot to go out and relax, and play the game that I love with joy. 

In the end, it is just a game.