How to Take Charge of Your Training (For Best Results Part 2)

In Part 1, For Best Results; Take Charge of Your Training,  you learned that for effective training leading to maximum improvement in the minimum amount of time, you need to:

  • Know your goals, and follow your plan.
  • Take responsibility for your journey.

That in order to reach your dream, you need to have clear goals, and take charge of your figure skating journey. By sitting in the driver’s seat of your skating journey bus, you know that you are going in the right direction toward your ultimate goal.

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For Best Results; Take Charge of Your Training (Part 1)

When go out onto the ice to compete, once the gate closes, you are on your own. Your coach and the rest of your team (parents, support coaches, trainers, mental game coach) can help you prepare, but you are the only one that can make the magic happen.
The truth is, whatever your sport, the only person responsible for your success is you. Coaches appropriate to your level may come and go throughout your development, but you (and your parents) are in it for the long run.

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Why a Growth Mindset is Key for a Strong Mental Game

Does your mindset keep you in a cage?

A strong mental game requires a mindset of Learning and Growth.

The top performers in any profession understand that:

  • Mistakes, challenges and “impossibilities” are opportunities for learning and innovation.
  • They keep the big picture in mind.  It is not about achieving the goal, it is about the journey.
  • They never get “it” done, that there will always be a new adventure waiting.
  • They are always capable of change or improvement and new ways of looking at things.
  • They can take any criticism, failure or weakness and make it work for them.

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Kurt Browning Shares Mental Game Tips

By David W. Carmichael <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons

I had the privilege of sitting in on a question and answer session with the great Kurt Browning.  He was in Vancouver, BC for Stars on Ice and took time out to teach a seminar for skaters in the area.

I have always been a fan of his fun and creative style, and his skill on the ice.  His showmanship is in a class of its own.

Watching and listening to him talk about skating, one can feel his genuine love of the ice fill the room.  It’s tangible; the ice becomes a presence sitting in the room with us.  What Kurt Browning does when he skates is what coaches mean when they say “be one with the ice.”  Figure skating to him is a way of life, a way of being, not just something he does.

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