My Quarantine Diary

Missing Hockey a lot during this lockdown situation and all the players and coaches sharing their crafts has been awesome. I would like to share something exciting – “Decision-Making!” Making the right decision will take your sports performance to the next level. So many people are playing sports, any a select are just incredible in their performances. A huge part of their achievement is due to their decision-making which has assisted in achieving their goals. Ultimately, that’s why mental fitness is so important!

Visual awareness and decision-making are essential to be able to play field hockey at a high level. Having the ability to process information, scan the pitch for options, and make quick decisions will set you apart from the rest. With tailored drills, you can improve your awareness, decision making and overall mental sharpness to improve your performance on the pitch.

I started playing Hockey professionally after school and six months later, the world would never be the same as my education achievements lost its value after a few Hockey badges.

Just out of school, I found that my decisions in the games impacted not only my performance, but also the team performance. Let me clear…I was a solid ball carrier, but without the ball, I was smarter than others. My brain was always busy thinking ahead. However, there was one small problem…I had no idea how to make more smart decisions with and without the ball. I had no idea how to reduce errors and create the right balance. I trusted my basic skills and I knew I could keep improving these through specific skills training but, I didn’t know how to make the best decisions I could and where to even start.

To fill my mental hockey toolbox, I looked around my hockey family and found some mentors. I watched them, asked them annoying questions, and tried to learn as much as I could from them. I started thinking about hockey 24/7 and I even began to dream about hockey. I went back to university to graduate. I’m not a fan of reading but one of my university professors suggested I start. I took their advice and began my reading journey about making decisions and the tools I needed to develop…the internet helped too.
Making better decisions is not a specific skill but rather a series of tools and frameworks. What distinguishes consistently good decision-makers from the rest is a series of diverse mental frameworks and tools (as well as relevant specific information).

Knowledge is hard to come by.

It takes work and commitment, and I think we owe it to ourselves to experiment with information. We should blow past conformity and apply all the knowledge at our disposal to the problems and challenges we face every day.

As a coaching student, I love experiments and freedom where I can learn and invent something productive. EVO Hockey is a company which  provides me with the opporunity, fredom and a platform where I can meet and share hockey philosophies, identities and cultiral differences with other top players and coaches from around the world,allowing me to keep developing.

“The frog in the well knows nothing of the mighty ocean.”

We live in a modern society that demands specialization. Being the best means being an expert in something. Letters after your name and decades in the trenches of experience are required before you can claim to know anything. In one sense there is nothing wrong with this — specialized knowledge is necessary to solve problems and advance our global potential. But a by-product of this niche focus is that it narrows the ways we think we can apply our knowledge without being called a fraud.

Hockey is a situational game, instances are constantly changing with actions. This means our nervous system is always engaged. I believe if junior coaches give extra assistance to help youth in improving their decision-making through different teaching methods and a variety of tailored exercises, young players will start becoming more aware of their hockey and ultimately increase their enjoyment.

Ultimately, decision-making is a diverse concept which I will contiinue to research, but thats enough for today.

I posted two videos on my Instagram you can see the link below to show you examples of how decision-making can be implemented in trainign sessions. This is one of my best intense exercises, which covers a lot of subjects, but the main focus is “Don’t Force the Decision.”

Please watch and enjoy!

Thanks