Pre-game Preparation

After trying many things to get our hockey team prepared for a game, this past weekend in Madison a girl on my team stepped up and had a GREAT idea. The previous weekend my coach had confronted my team about our playing habits, and wanted us to come up with a reason why we had been so inconsistent. In this search for an answer, my team and I had decided that we were going to put a new twist in our pre-game preparation. After our warm up and stretch outside in the parking lot, we decided to try something new. Whitney, the girl who came up with this outstanding idea, told everyone to lay down and close there eyes and asked everyone to turn off there iPods. Since I have played with Whitney before in the past, I had already done this pre-game preparation meditation. As we were laying down with our eyes closed, the first thing she told us to do was think of a color and to think only about that particular color. After about a minute, she told us to stop thinking about that color and told us to think of a sound and only that sound. After about another minute, she told us to think about the color and the sound and only those two things. She then told us to think only of the color and to totally forget about the sound. After that, she told us to stop thinking of the color. As I was laying there with my eyes closed, I was thinking about absolutely nothing. You may not think it but you really can thing about nothing at times and this is exactly was this activity was meant to do. Make you clear your mind and think of nothing. In order for it to work, you have to concentrate really hard and think about only the things the leader tells you to think about. For most people, this worked. Our minds were clear. We went out and played an outstanding game and that is exactly what we wanted. We finally found a Pre-game meditation activity that we will continue to do before we play games.

Has anyone else who plays sports done anything like this to get mentally prepared for a game?