For all those players who have experienced or are currently experiencing an inability to get to the next level, I want to offer one insight into what can have an immediate impact on your successful pursuit of the next level.
Imagine if you will the Kobe Bryant approach to hockey. Kobe was an animal. He was a training freak who would trains three sometimes four times a day. Shooting, running, and weightlifting. His regimen was one that almost no one else could keep up with.
Floyd Mayweather was another super athlete who would out train every other fighter in the world. Two or three times a day in the gym, sometimes starting at three in the morning. Running home from the gym so he didn’t waste the time he had.
Connor McDavid is another. He trains, he is in the gym, and on the ice consistently. Eating right, sleeping right, and focusing everything he has on being the best.
So players say to themselves, that they are going to do the same. They will be animals in the gym, on the ice all the time and doing everything possible to reach the next level.
But if you are not training the right way, not using the right form, not improving the techniques and mechanics of everything you are doing; all you are doing is increasing your performance of bad habits, techniques and bad form. And that alone will keep you from advancing.
While the intention of training like crazy is great, the implementation of training properly first and then accelerating the volume of training will become most effective.
Bad habits training, create bad habits in performance no matter how great your intentions are.
The same is true when it comes to where you are looking for opportunities to reach the next level.
If you continue to go to the same camps, looking for the same types of opportunities, and view things the same way, you are not going to find new levels of success. You can argue these points all you want, you can shake your head like some are doing right now, but in the end these are undeniable facts.
In order to be effective, you must find the optimal way for YOU to have success. Not what worked for Kobe, Floyd or McDavid, but what works for you. You must be dissected as an athlete, and reprogrammed to do things you have not done in order to find new success.
What works for McDavid is not going to work for you because you are not him. You do not have the same skill set, same physical attributes, or access to the same nutrition, trainers and items only the very best have access too.
What you do have though is choice. The ability to change is a choice. It is mental and physical.
If you find yourself not making the gains you hope for, then clearly something needs to change. Ignoring this one absolute fact is what holds most players back from becoming all they possibly can.
When you are ready to acknowledge these truths, I look forward to helping you reach the next level.
Joseph Kolodziej – Adviser
