The Life of a College Hockey Player – A conversation with Cornell’s Hayley Hughes

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Hayley Hughes, a junior forward for the Cornell Big Red Women’s Hockey team. Hayley, a psychology major, managed EXACT’s Neurocognitive Testing Station at the recent NHL Draft Combines in Toronto.  Cornell Big Red women’s team had a tremendous season this year, losing the NCAA Championship game in Triple OT to the UMN-Duluth Bulldogs. I asked Hayley a number of questions regarding life as a college student athlete.

Mentally, how challenging is the college hockey season?

There is so much more that goes into hockey than just playing the games. You have to be prepared in every aspect of the game. Whether it is nutrition, skills, or fitness, your mentality is what drives you to do well in all of these areas. Therefore, mentally, the college hockey season is very tough considering you spend so much time preparing for a limited amount of games. You have to be ready for each one, and that means being ready for every game and practice and dealing with the distractions of the college life.

How do you balance academics, hockey, training, and friends?

In college hockey, you have to learn to make sacrifices. As NCAA athletes, we do not get to have the typical college experience. Primarily, I am going to college to get a good education. As much as I love hockey, my academics are very important to me. It took some time, but it was mainly through experience that I have learned the proper way to manage my time. I am able to stay caught up in school in order for me to truly focus on training and hockey when the time comes. Unfortunately, this sometimes means I am sacrificing some of my social life. However, the team knows that we are all here because we love the game, and if that means sacrificing a few nights out, we are willing to put that aside to play.

Describe your team last season, and what were the key qualities of your team that allowed you to defy the odds and make it to the NCAA Championship game?

I think one of the most important things about our team last year is that even though no one expected us to be a challenge, we had no doubt in our minds that we could be the team to beat. Right from the start, my coach set goals for our team that involved winning everything possible. It’s hard to explain, but when I looked around the dressing room I could see it. I could see a team that was willing to do anything to win. Besides believing in ourselves, another very important quality I felt we had was team cohesion. We were a small team and we knew we needed everybody to bring their best game in order to succeed. In that sense, we were hard on each other, pushing each other to be better. Negativity was not tolerated. You cannot have one single player who doesn’t want to be there, who doesn’t want to put forth every effort possible, because if you do the whole system breaks down.

How would you describe the experience of the frozen four, and in particular going into 3 OTs for the final game?

The frozen four was such an amazing experience. For me, it felt like it was our Stanley Cup playoffs. It’s hard to explain a feeling like that. Everyone was ecstatic and energetic because we knew we deserved to be there. Nothing else mattered that weekend. It was like hockey was our life and our only job, which we all agreed was one of the best feelings we had ever felt. I think one of the biggest differences at the frozen four compared to regular season was the advertisement and promotion of the weekend. I think it’s great that we had conferences, media coverage, and things like custom-made shirts and posters because it really helps the promotion of women’s sports. Again, that ties in with the feeling that we were part of something really spectacular and I am very thankful my team was able to experience it.

What did that final game bring about physically, mentally and emotionally for the team?

My team was definitely pushed to the max physically, mentally and emotionally. In a game that lasts 3 overtimes, it is obviously physically strenuous. Playing two games of hockey back-to-back would be strenuous for anyone. Although we were a physically prepared team, I think we all knew that we had run out of gas, as had the other team. In my opinion it really hurt our team because we aren’t the most skilled team in the league. We do have a lot of skill, but most of our successes have come from second efforts and out-working the other team. Mentally and emotionally, our team was tested. When you are physically exhausted, you become irritated and agitated. However, instead of doing that, from what I heard in the dressing room the team was doing their best to keep their cool. Again, we had focused on positivity all year as we had a small roster and we knew we needed everyone. I think all of these combined things made the loss that much more disappointing. We had given everything and were strained in all aspects, and we felt like we were left with nothing. But despite the loss, we had lost together. We can honestly say that this team stuck together all year, and what we accomplished really made history at Cornell.

You mentioned being injured over the last games, how hard was it to sit there and watch your teammates and not be able to help them out on the ice?

I think the feelings experience while playing during a game, and the feelings experience while watching your team play is entirely different. In a game you are nervous, but it allows you to find motivation to get excited for the game and pushes you to want to affect the game somehow, whether it be pumping up your teammates or making a great play. However, from the stands it’s an entirely different feeling. The lack of control is really the worst part of it. You’re nervousness just keeps growing and growing and you have no way of getting rid of it because you cannot go out there and do what you think needs to be done. Also, not being able to play in the most important games of our season was just heart-wrenching. I had done my best to help the team all year to make it where we were, and I couldn’t help them finish the job. They did so well though and I am extremely proud of every one of them.

What are your summer plans to help you get ready for next season?

As I said before, playing hockey at an elite level really requires some level of sacrifice. This means sacrificing some of the relaxing and social areas of my summer. I currently work 9-5 Monday through Friday at a gym, where I also workout five days of the week. With the help of a summer program provided by my team’s trainer, I am focusing on weight training, cardio, and agility to get as prepared as possible for pre-season training and practices. The atmosphere at the gym I go to is great because it consists of mainly hockey players and other athletes which really helps me push myself to become better and stronger. Although I do plan on getting on the ice, it will not nearly be as often as my off-ice training. Also, individually I like to focus on things I think need improving. For example, for me I really would like to be more of an offensive threat next year. Therefore, I want to work on my supper body strength to make myself a more dangerous shooter, and my core strength to make myself harder to push off the puck, and my agility in order to be able to move quickly out of the corners and into the slot. Although it is hard work, I love how it makes me feel. Finally, nutrition is so important. In order to get the most benefit out of my training, I have to be eating the proper meals. I get as much advice as I can from my trainer at school and at home, and also from other athletes, in order to try and tailor my diet specifically to me. A successful season starts in the summer.

Describe your experience at the NHL Combines.

Being able to witness the 2010 NHL combine was a great experience. Although young, the players at the combine had been preparing a long time for these tests and it really showed that weekend. Each player went through a series of tests, some more strenuous than others, but I felt they were all mentally challenging as there was a lot of media and scouts keeping a close eye on all of them. After tests that measured their strength, explosiveness, agility, and balance, each player was pushed to the max in Wingate test and the VO2 test. In my opinion this is where the players were really tested for their physical preparation and mental toughness. As part of the EXACT Sports team that weekend, I assisted with the psychological testing station as an intern. After a very tough VO2 test, the players came to my station, where I administered to them a spatial orientation awareness test, to test their ability to focus during exhaustion. The professional and exciting atmosphere that I worked in that weekend really made for an amazing couple of days and also helped me to gain experience in the professional field. It really combined my love of sports and my interest in psychology. Furthermore, it enabled me to apply my knowledge while also gaining some from the professionals in the business. I truly gained insight into the hockey world and the field of sports psychology and I have EXACT Sports and the people running the 2010 NHL combine to thank for that.

Mental and emotional preparation, time management, and understanding the importance of balancing hockey, academics, and friends are essential qualities for becoming a capable student athlete at the college level.

Of note, Edith Zimmering, one of Hayley’s assistant coaches at Cornell University, will be instructing at the upcoming National College Development Clinic in Montreal over the July 3-4 weekend. Coach Zimmering brings a wealth of goaltending expertise and will work one-on-one with the goalies over the course of the camp. Any hockey players that have an interest in working with some of the top Division I and Division III coaches, should check out the EXACT Hockey website.

Mental Training for Hockey

Start your hockey mental training today. Here is a follow-up on yesterday’s blog post with some simple techniques to begin training your brain.

At the elite levels of most sports, the competition is usually pretty tight, with most participants having a similar level of fitness and skill, and thus, the margin for victory is small.  Coaches and players are beginning to realize that in order to stay one step ahead of their competition, they need to practice more than just skill and technique, they need to train the mental aspect of their game. So when faced with similarly skilled competition, it is the team that is more mentally prepared, more poised, and more confident that will emerge the victor.

Concentration, confidence, composure and commitment are considered the primary mental qualities that are essential for successful performance in sports.  Collectively, these are known as the the 4C’s.

• Concentration: the ability to maintain focus
• Confidence: the belief in one’s abilities
• Composure: the ability to maintain emotional control
• Commitment: the ability to set and work towards pre-defined goals

The techniques of mental imagery, goal-setting, and focus can help athletes achieve the 4C’s.

With mental imagery, players imagine performing a specific movement or skill.  This technique helps activate the same neural pathways from the brain to the muscles that are used to perform the actual movement.  There is a plethora of scientific evidence that demonstrates the concept of mental rehearsal leading to an improvement in performance.

Goal-setting is a motivating technique that simply involves setting short-term and long-term goals for yourself. Think about an ideal future and then set incremental goals to turn your vision of the future into reality. You will learn to effectively use time and resource management to achieve short-term goals, which raises one’s level of confidence and leads to increased levels of motivation.

You can improve your ability to focus much like any other skill (ie. with practice and training). The simplest form of meditation can be used to achieve greater focus through concentrating on an object — study the object, focus completely on that object — what does it look like, its shape and color, how does it smell, what is its texture — learn how to control your breathing and focus your mind and energy on the simplest of tasks.

One of the biggest obstacles with mental training lies in overcoming the perceived “silliness and triviality” of some of the techniques used. But hey, this is something that can be done on your own time, in your own space, with no-one else around. Use this time wisely and correctly, and you will notice an increase in your performance, but like the development of any skill, mental training takes time and patient. Learn these techniques and many others by attending one of our summer college hockey camps.

Playoff Goaltending: Skill vs. Mental

Plenty of critics will tell you that goaltending is 90% mental. Is it really?

Any skilled performance has a mental component. At the elite level in any sport, the difference in skill between Player A and Player B is probably minimal, so what makes Player A more successful? If skill levels are equal, then the mental component can be the pivotal difference, perhaps even enough to overcome a disadvantage in skill.   No better example exists than goaltending in the playoffs. Reporters cling to the teams with the “hot goalie” and every year there seem to be prime examples of goaltenders bringing it in the playoffs (Halak with the Habs and Anderson with the Avalanche are current examples).

In Patrick Roy’s words “For goaltenders everything is playing between your ears. If you can believe it, you can do it. If you’re not confident when you start, it makes a difference.” As a young goaltender, how do you develop this confidence? How do you become mentally tough? How can you put yourself in the zone? These are the types of questions we (at EXACT Sports) continually ask ourselves. Our mental diagnostics are designed to provide a unique portrait of who you are and help you learn more about how to improve the psychological aspect of your game. We designed these tools and they are currently used by the NHL and over 100 NCAA programs (Read about EXACT and the sport psychology done at the NHL combine). EXACT’s new summer college hockey camp program (National College Development Clinic) brings these same tools to high school athletes across the country.  In addition, all camps will be led by current NCAA college coaches. Over 25 different NCAA college hockey programs committed to instruct at our hockey camps this summer, including coaches from programs such as Mercyhurst College, Syracuse University, University of North Dakota, Amherst College, Gustavus Adolphus and many others.

Most players I know spend hours everyday working on their physical skills, but very few (actually none really), give much thought on mental training. The main reason is they probably have never been taught how to develop the mental aspect of their game. Now is the time to start! If you want to surpass the player next to you,  you need to start training your brain too. Start your hockey mental training today.

Principle of Overload: Are you training progressively?

Welcome to Part 4 of our Off-Season Training guide:  The Principle of  Overload

The overload principle states that in order to keep making gains from an exercise program, you must find some way to make it more difficult. This is because bodies adapt to exercise. The problem is that once your body adapts to a given workload, it will not continue to adapt unless the workload is increased somehow. If you do not continue to adapt, then eventually you will plateau and regress. Having stated that it is necessary to make conditioning programs more difficult, one caution should be kept in mind: you must observe specificity when applying the overload principle. Performing a set of  twenty might be a way of making the workout more difficult, but if you need to enhance the phosphagen energy system then you are violating specificity. There are a number of ways to apply the  overload principle to a strength and conditioning program:

• increase the weight lifted
• increase the volume of work
• change the exercises employed
• modify the order of the exercises
• alter the rest periods

Increasing the weight that is lifted will make the workout more difficult. Heavier weights will force your muscles, connective tissue, bone and nervous system to adapt. Lifting heavier weights will also cause you to initially perform fewer repetitions with the weight.

Increasing the volume of work—either number of sets, number of repetitions, or some combination thereof—will result in your body having to adapt to it. This is one of the main ways to elicit larger muscles and connective tissue adaptation from strength training. One should be careful with this method of applying overload; a volume that is too great will train the wrong energy system.

Changing the exercises employed is a way to increase overload that many individuals are reluctant to use. Many people feel that the exercises they are performing are the only ones that can elicit certain gains. This is not so. Changing the exercises has a number of benefits, including keeping the workouts interesting and requiring your body and nervous system to adapt to resistance imposed in a totally different way. There are many exercises that train the same movement and the same muscle groups, this means that you do not have to rely on one exercise to train a given area.

The order that exercises are performed is another way to provide overload. By changing when exercises are performed, you make some exercises more difficult to perform and others easier. For example, in your current workout your exercise order may look like this: bench press, incline press, dumbbell flies. Now, let’s change the order of exercises so that the new workout looks like this: dumbbell flies, incline press, bench press. The result of this change is that you will be able to lift more weight on the dumbbell flies and incline press, because they are performed while you are fresher. You will lift less weight on the bench press, because it will be performed while you are fatigued. Not only will you become stronger on the first two exercises, but you will also keep your workouts interesting and this will also help your body to adapt in a different manner because you are focusing on the first two exercises instead of the bench press.

A final way to provide overload is to modify the amount of rest. This must be used carefully to ensure that you are observing specificity. By increasing the amount of rest in between sets, you allow your body to recover more completely. This means you will be able to lift heavier weights with a greater number of repetitions. The benefit oft this approach to training is that it allows you to increase your strength on exercises. Conversely, if you shorten the amount of rest in between sets, you do not allow yourself as much recovery. It becomes more difficult to lift a given amount of weight. While this does not do as good a job of increasing strength, it does force the muscles to grow to adapt to the rest period.

Overload is not something that only needs to be applied on a daily basis, it must be applied over a lifetime of training. The final principle deals with the importance of applying overload logically over time.

Principle of Specificity: Are you training right?

Welcome to Part 3 of our Off-Season Training guide:  The Principle of Specificity of Training

The principle of specificity is deceptively simple and it drives all the gains that one makes from a strength training program. Specificity states that the body makes gains from exercise according to how the body exercises. This  principle is important because applying it correctly will allow one to have a focused, efficient, effective program that will lead to the desired gains. Failing to apply it will result in wasted energy and time, and it will result in frustration as gains do not materialize.

When developing a conditioning program, you should consider the following:

• the movements to be trained
• the muscles and joints to be trained
• the energy system(s) to be trained
• the speed of movement

Strength and conditioning programs can be designed to enhance movements that are performed in athletics. This is important because this may improve an athlete’s performance. It may do this by strengthening the movement; it may also accomplish this by allowing the athlete to practice the movement with resistance. It is also important because it can maximize an athlete’s training time and be used to help prevent injuries in the athletic event. A number of  questions should be considered to help with this:

Is the activity performed standing?
What joints perform the activity?
Do the joints work together or sequentially? If sequentially, what is the sequence of movement?
What motions are performed by each joint?

Things like workload, rest, and intensity are driven by the energy system(s) that you want to train. Energy system training is critical to improving athletic performance. Often performance is limited by your energy stores and your ability to replenish them, both of which are trainable. You can design conditioning programs to enhance the energy system(s) that are used in an athletic event. To do this, consider the following:

How long does the event last?
Is the event performed continuously? Or does the athlete get to rest?
If the event is not continuous, how much time does the athlete actually spend moving before he or she gets to rest?

Energy system training is an important consideration because it helps to dictate how much weight to use, how many repetitions to perform, and the amount of recovery time. If you are interested in increasing the stores of ATP, then training will involve heavy weight, low repetitions, and lots of rest. Glycolytic training will involve moderate reps, moderate weight, and little rest. Aerobic training means lighter weights, many repetitions, and no rest.

A final consideration with specificity concerns the velocity of movement. The gains from exercise are specific to the velocities that the exercises are performed at. If exercises are performed at slow speeds, then we become stronger at slow speeds; however, there is little transfer to faster speeds. If exercises are performed at faster speeds, then we become stronger at faster speeds. This is important for athletics because few sports are performed at slow speeds.

If one is designing a conditioning program for a sport that is performed at high speeds, then one will need to include exercises that make athletes stronger at high speeds. These include things like the variations of the Olympic-style lifts (the clean, the snatch, and the jerk), plyometric exercises, and sprints.

The principle of specificity is important because it dictates what gains are made.