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Address to the Nation

Address To The Nation: Keep Feeding Me For Life

This week’s Address to the Nation comes off the end of a development camp that we just finished.

It’s kind of cruel because I’m going to pick on a player indirectly. This player did a five-day development camp with us at NSA, and then a week later they did a weekend clinic with us as well.

Within that short period of time, this person’s development increased exponentially. Take wall sits for example. Their record for doing a wall sit was probably 3-3.5 minutes. After working on it throughout that whole intense week of camp, and the subsequent clinic, at the end of the weekend session their top wall sit time was over 7 minutes. Within that two-week period, it increased so much.

Obviously, that’s just one example, but it just shows you that, especially for ice hockey but for any sport, a lot of time development gets mistaken for a one-off thing.
It’s this mindset of “I’ll do one camp and then I’m good” or “I’ll do a couple of things here and then I’ll be good for the rest of the year”.
These development camps are almost seen like a conference or something where you sit down, get a bunch of information and then that will suffice for the rest of the season – and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

When it comes to development, it’s a journey, like anything else. Take an intense training camp for example – 5 consecutive days where you get to stack on level upon level of growth and improvement. The first day you get a little bit better, and then the next day you get a little bit better, and then the next day you combine days one and two, and then you add it to three, and in that ecosystem, you can grow so much.

But once you encounter those intense moments of development – continue. Continue to invest in yourself. Investing in yourself needs to be a consistent journey, a consistent path.
You might go to a conference or listen to a motivational speaker, or you might go see a life coach, or a health expert, but even that – let’s not one-off things that are good for us, that invest into us. We need to make that a continual thing.

Maybe you go to a bulk camp, maybe you get that concentrated time of growth and development. But you need to keep on adding onto that. Keep on doing little things throughout. It’s a daily thing. It’s a weekly thing.

I’m talking to myself here as well.

Personally, I have concentrated times of self-development, and then I expect that little bit is going to carry me, but it disperses. I’ve found that the best way to keep holding onto that developmental gain is to keep it fresh in your mind and keep working at it, and keep developing and keep investing and keep taking in and taking in, and using it.

To put this into a practical point: development and growth is taking daily bite-sized fractions of it and consuming it. It’s not a one-off Thanksgiving meal and that’s going to feed you for the rest of your life. Even though that Thanksgiving meal is a feast, a feast doesn’t feed you for a year. A feast may feed you for two days, but even though we have those times of high consumption, we’re always going to need that fuel, we’re always going to need some kind of daily intake, in order to live.

So, make sure your growth, your development, your investment in yourself, is a daily consumption. If you’re reaching to be better, to achieve your goals – that’s what it’s going to take: daily consumption of what you need to get to where you want to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

— JFK

John knew that he wanted to play hockey from the age of four, and since then he's played in Juniors, Division 1 College, Professional hockey, and won 2 Goodall Cup Championships in the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL). When he's not playing hockey, he's teaching others how to play. As one of the founding members of the National Sport Academy (NSA), John's mission is to spread the sport of hockey across Australia, and provide elite training for those pursuing the game at the highest levels. John's drive, tenacity, and continual pursuit to 'Be Better' shines through in everything he sets out to do.

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