The chasm of GoalieBrain

Well, I played open hockey yesterday and the only person I gave nightmares to was myself. And maybe anyone playing in front of me. I had a pretty crappy outing but amazingly enough, I just sort of shrugged it off and didn't get down about it. I just felt like I couldn't get into my groove at all. As I mentioned on Twitter, the rink was playing god-awful music (who the heck gets pumped up to play hockey listening to "Cornflake Girl" and "Champagne Supernova"???). It's fine though. I guess that just means I'm saving my "A" game for the Hawks on Sunday night.

Speaking of Twitter, I guess I never realized how completely stream-of-consciousness my tweets are. (That's kind of the point, isn't it?) I'd say 99.9999% of my tweets are hockey related, and about 94% of those are goalie related. The other .00001% are probably rants about traffic or people being complete dillholes in general. But it wasn't until I got this response from a friend (blog reader known as "#14") that made me realize just how completely goalie-centric pretty much everything out of my twitter-mouth is. After randomly musing about the way Lundqvist reportedly has his skates cut, I got this IM from him: "You understand that reading your tweets is like walking directly into the chasm of the Goalie Brain, right?" Hmmm. He's right. So be it. It's honestly how my brain works. It's kind of like this: work thought - work thought - work thought - check twitter - work thought - work thought - OMG holy crap I just figured out something I was doing wrong on the ice!!! - work thought - work thought - Rask - Rask - Lundqvist - VarLAmov - work thought - Lehtonen - Rask - Kiprusoff - Rask - work thought.... etc. It's ok though, because on Twitter I've found a little cadre of people whose brains all work the same way. Mostly. Just substitute "Brust" for "Rask" in one person's case. Actually, substitute "Brust" for all of them. (hee hee hee).

On the training front, things are moving along nicely. I'm wrapping up Week Two and find myself a little anxious to get going on Week Three, because the exercise sets are going to change up a little. I peeked ahead at the schedule and saw "Core 2" on some days instead of "Core 1". Woo hoo! Something different! The only thing that's bothering me a little is fitting the schedule into my regular work/hockey schedule. For example, every Wednesday night I have practice at 10pm, which means I'm not home and curled up in bed until 12:30 at the earliest. Sorry but there's no way I'm getting up 4 1/2 hours later to work out. (I have to be up at 5 to work out in order to get to work on time). So Thursdays are out. Then this week on Friday morning I got up early to go play open hockey. So no training on Friday morning either. But it's not like I sat on my ass and did nothing - I was on the ice for an hour and a half. I've resolved it this way: some days on the schedule are just core and flexibility. Some are speed or strength AND core and flexibility. I make sure that I get in all the days with all three so I'm not missing anything. I hope that'll be ok. I just keep reminding myself that something is better than nothing, so if I'm missing a core/flexibility-only day here or there, at least I'm still doing a heck of a lot more to improve myself than I was before I started this. Sleep is important. If I don't sleep, I get sick, and then I can't work out (or play!) at all.

And now that I've really rambled, I doubt there's anyone still reading this. It amazes me that people even want to read this in the first place, since if Twitter is walking into the chasm of GoalieBrain, this has to be complete immersion. Probably only other goalies can stand it, and even then only the obsessive ones. But that's how my brain works... I have to pour stuff out or it rattles around in there and drives me nuts. So thanks for reading, if you've made it this far.