How to Play Well When You Don’t Have Time for Your Pregame Routine

Photo: Seth J Sports

Pregame routines are crucial for preparing your mind and body to perform at their highest level. But sometimes, unforeseen circumstances keep you from going through your routine before the game. When you aren’t able to, it’s easy to think that you won’t play your best, and write the game off before it even starts. Maybe you feel like you will have to struggle to play your best game. Neither writing the game off, nor believing you will have to try harder to play your best do anything positive for you.

No matter what the circumstances may be, as a goalie, all of your teammates are still relying on you to do your job, and you are expected to perform your best to give the team a chance to win the game.

Here are 3 ways to help you play your best when your pregame routine is cut short.

Prioritize

When have a shorter amount of time than normal to get ready to play, you want to prioritize the steps from your pregame routine that get your mind most focused. If you have to choose between steps that get your body ready to play, or your mind ready to play, you probably want to pick your mind since you have a little time to warm up physically once you get on the ice for warmups. Give yourself enough time to get dressed properly. Once you hit the ice, make sure to get yourself moving, so that your heart rate rises, and your muscles get as warm and limber as they can before the puck drops.

You know your routine best. Figure out what you may want to leave out, and prioritize mental preparation. Some examples of mental preparation are visualization, breathing, and affirmations. Usually every goalie has their own little routines and quirks they have to get themselves mentally focused and ready to play.

Understand what yours are, and if you only have time for a couple steps of your routine, go with the ones that get you best prepared to play.

Utilize Warm-Ups

Since you haven’t had time for your full off ice routine, that means your on ice routine is even more important. We have already mentioned how important it is to get moving. Once you get on the ice, do some C-cuts or movements to get your blood pumping, and then do a quick little stretch to get yourself limber. If you just hop on the ice and stretch totally cold, you won’t be able to get as much mobility out of your muscles. After a quick stretch, you probably want to do some more movements. You want to move around enough so that you get your heart rate pretty high, but obviously you don’t want to completely drain all of your energy. Try to find this balance as you get moving around during your on ice warm up.

Now that you have your body heating up, you need to prepare another part of your game that you most likely haven’t had time to yet- your tracking. We recommend intentional tracking whether you have been through your full pregame routine or not, but since you have not had time to warm up your tracking before stepping onto the ice for warm ups, it is important that you really focus on getting your tracking dialed in.

To do this, when your team shoots, really focus on watching each puck ALL the way into your body/glove/pad, and ALL the way off of your body/glove/pad. This is what we are referring to when we refer to “intentional tracking”. Making sure you are tracking the puck intentionally for the short warm up time you have will get you ready to track the puck to the best of your ability during the game, and even improve your tracking over time.

Remember This—

One of the toughest things about showing up late to a game and having to cut some of your pregame routine is the mental battle that goes along with it: you may assume that since you didn’t have time to go through your full pregame routine, that you therefore won’t play your best, or you will have to struggle to play your best. Do not allow thoughts like this to sneak into your mind- they are not productive whatsoever, and, they are inaccurate. Think about this:

Is cutting out some of your pregame routine really going to take away all the hours of work and practice you have put in towards making yourself the best goalie you can be? It it simply going to erase all of the training and preparation you have done for this game?

The answer is obviously no.

So whenever you aren’t able to go through your entire pregame routine, remember that that isn’t going to take away all the work you have done. You are still just as ready, because you still have all the hours you’ve put into getting better. This will give you confidence heading into the game when faced with this circumstance, and allow you to relax and play your best game.

Of course, for this thought to work, you have to make sure you are actually putting in the work. If you aren’t, then you will know subconsciously that you are simply lying to yourself, and it won’t gain you any confidence.

Play Your Game

Being forced to cut some of your pregame routine is a physical challenge no doubt. But it is even more of a mental challenge- it’s easy to doubt yourself, and feel like you have to “try harder” to play your best since you didn’t have time for your full pregame routine. But the key to overcoming this mental challenge and stepping on the ice with your best focus is to block out the negative thoughts that your mind wants to entertain, and focus on two things: One, is the parts of your routine that you do have time for. Focusing on your routine, on the present, keeps your mind from getting too far ahead of itself and worrying about what may happen in the near future. And two, focus on the idea that no matter what parts of your routine you had to cut out, the hours of work and training you have put in will always be there. You are the same goalie, routine or not. So trust this thought, and put energy into it.

Reinforcing this thought will give you belief and confidence when you step on the ice, and from there, your concentration will flow. You will get into the zone. And once that happens, you will play your best hockey.