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Taylor Cook is a retired professional hockey player with over 25+ years of international experience. She currently works as a mental performance coach serving athletes and sports coaches.
We discuss:
- How Taylor’s experience as an athlete serves her as a coach — and understanding the limits
- The education and training that contributes to her coaching
- Personalization of coaching
- Building blocks of mental performance
- Mental skills that are beneficial in hockey
- What makes a hockey player successful?
- Visualization techniques
- What Taylor covers on The Athletic Mind Podcast
About today’s guest
Taylor Cook is a retired professional hockey player with over 25+ years of international experience, owner of Taylored Minds Coaching where she works as a mental performance coach serving athletes and sports coaches, and she is the founder and host of The Athletic Mind podcast. Learn more about Taylor:
About the host
Ross Romano is co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and also hosts The Authority Podcast. He began his career in the pro sports industry before becoming a leading communications, marketing, and management expert working with education companies. He is founder and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. He also works directly with professionals at all levels, in all industries, coaching them in their pursuit of success.
Creators & Guests
What is Sideline Sessions?
Designed for coaches, parents and other stakeholders in the world of youth, scholastic, and amateur sports, this show brings you interviews with leaders at the highest levels of their respective sports.
Hear from coaches and performance experts with experience in the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Olympics, and NCAA Division-I, plus those who run elite youth programs, successful high school teams, and more. Hear about their motivations, philosophies, and strategies for success, and take away actionable insights to support the athletes in your life.
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody to another episode of Sideline Sessions here on the BE Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us. I'm really pleased today to be bringing a conversation with a great coach [00:01:00] and an opportunity to talk a little bit about the sport of hockey, which we haven't covered yet here on the show.
For those of you interested, those of you who may coach or have kids who play hockey. So we'll get into that a little bit. We'll get into mental performance and a lot more. My guest is Taylor Cook. Taylor is a retired professional hockey player with over 25 years of international experience. She is the owner of Taylored Minds Coaching, where she works as a mental performance coach, serving athletes and sports coaches, and she's the founder and host of the Athletic Mind Podcast.
Taylor, thanks for being here.
Taylor Cook: Oh, thanks so much for for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Ross Romano: Excellent. So I wanted to start here. How does your experience as an athlete serve you as a coach?
Taylor Cook: starting off with good questions. I love it. Yeah, I mean, I think having the background in sport definitely plays a huge role into the type of coach that I want to be because I'm able to pull from my own experience as a young athlete and kind of growing through the different phases and skill levels [00:02:00] as well to kind of be able to learn from the coaches that I had in both a positive and negative way, right?
So to, to see what I I would have needed at that point in that stage of my, in my career to maybe have developed a little bit faster or to have been a little bit stronger in different areas or to just to simply identify certain pieces of my game, both on and off the ice. That would have allowed me to, again, like just develop a little bit differently.
Ross Romano: What do you believe or impose, I guess, as the limits of that? Like there's obviously a certain amount of your lived experience and you having gone through being an athlete yourself, what it took to prepare yourself and your training and all of that. And that gives you a good perspective on understanding other athletes.
But then of course, as you're getting into coaching and you're understanding that each other person is unique, has their own their own things they're challenged with, their own goals. Are there certain limit Limits [00:03:00] you intentionally place around, okay, I don't want to overgeneralize my own experience here, or just that you've learned you know, are the things that you're continuing to learn or you're intentionally learning outside of the classroom.
What you're able to draw from your own experience.
Taylor Cook: Yeah. So, I mean, I think I pull a lot from my own personal experience, of course, just like everybody else does. But I've been able to develop myself outside of my own experience as well. And of course getting the certifications and knowledge around performance coaching in general but I am also really interested in the leadership side of that as well.
And actually that's one thing I hope to see much more frequently, especially in the coaching realm and sports is also implementing the leadership aspect. And like coaches need coaches too, but coaches also need to learn how to be good leaders for their athletes if they want to get the best out of them as well.
Right. So I think. Being able to kind of bring that leadership [00:04:00] component into the coaching space is going to really help athletes to flourish and really be at their peak when they need to be as well.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Okay. Can you tell us some more about those certifications you referenced, like what they are, what you learned through the process of earning them, and then what they're meant to represent for coaches who have them.
Taylor Cook: Yeah, for sure. So I think my route was maybe a little bit less conventional than a lot of other mental performance coaches. So, I actually took my certification while I was still playing professionally because. This was, oh, I guess in 2020 now. So, I was playing overseas in Norway and unfortunately at that point in time, like being paid a significant amount where you were going to be having a livable salary just wasn't an option, right?
So I was kind of, preparing for my second career in the midst of playing [00:05:00] in my first and my passion for hockey. But I went with a company back home from Toronto and I was going through their certification program. And basically a lot of it was just learning the very foundations to start, like self awareness, how do we build self awareness?
What does that actually mean? And then getting more in depth about what are the certain tools and strategies that. athletes specifically can use and implement into their practices. So it's not just going through the motions all the time. Like it's so easy to kind of fall into that routine where wake up, go to the rink, you have practice, go to school, or like, maybe you have practice after school.
But to just fall into this routine of just going through the motions and not really thinking about what you're actually trying to improve on or being as intentional as you could be. So learning a lot of different tools to develop myself actually in the process [00:06:00] while I was going through the coaching certification and also being able to actually implement those things in real time was a very unique and interesting experience.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Are there, like in, in hockey coaching, are there are there required certifications in different leagues or different countries that you have to earn,
Taylor Cook: I mean, it's definitely based on the country that you're in, right? And it also depends on what specifically it is that you're doing. So in Canada they have like the national accreditation. So like, I believe it's the NCPP or I'm not accredited with it. So truthfully, I couldn't tell you. But here in Germany, for example even if you have, like, the highest accredited coaching certification for hockey from Canada, it's not going to be recognized here in Germany, and you actually have to go through their course.
So it's almost like learning double to be able to coach in different countries. But the regulations vary from country to country, so it really just depends where you're at. [00:07:00] Mhm.
Ross Romano: That's interesting. I hadn't really known or thought much about that until more recently learning about, yeah in soccer slash European football the different certifications that coaches are required to have to be a UAPA pro coach, et cetera. And how that's regulated versus Yeah, sports primarily here in the U.
S. that there's training programs, of course, but there's not typically those required certifications in most things. You know, maybe some coaches, certain sports might be required to have a certification in CPR or something like that, but you don't need to be certified to be able to coach basketball or whatever.
You can hire anybody you think would do a good job. But I think it does represent at least something interesting to think about about the way it's done in different countries and particularly with respect to youth development program, right? And a lot of certainly in a lot of Europe, there is more of [00:08:00] a, an integrated through line and development program from the youth levels up all the way into the professional levels.
And the sports are managed a little differently, but it does at least indicate like a level of planning and care that's put into what appropriate youth development should be. And even if we're developing them into elite athletes that. Potentially there's something to learn from that, even if we don't want to replicate it exactly but and that I mean, my understanding of it at least, and maybe you certainly know more, is that maybe it represents a little more of an opportunity to be a little more purely merit based versus who has the means to pay for elite training.
Programs or academies which of course could mean that certain athletes that [00:09:00] have high potential might not necessarily be in the highest level programs in places where there's different systems in place. But I don't know if you've observed any anything that stands out about, like, some of the things that are different about a system like that or the pros and cons, but you know, but how it at least. Develop some parameters around what, as a system, we want to get out of youth athletic development.
Taylor Cook: Yeah, I think at least in my experience from what I've seen in Europe and the different countries that I've played and also the different countries where I'm a little bit more familiarized with the system it definitely does differentiate like the Canadian and the American set up in the sense that from, I think back to when I was playing youth, I don't think that any of my coaches were like certified by a national board or something like this, had to go through some sort of [00:10:00] training or anything.
It was just like the dad who had a kid there, they loved the sport. So they're like, Oh, I'm just going to like jump in and be head coach or something like this. Don't get me wrong. Some of them for sure. Had a little bit more knowledge and understanding of the game. But when I look at here, like even for more like recreational type teams, you still have to have a coach who knows what they're doing.
They have at least a minimum level certification from their national board. And if I think more specifically to kind of like, if you look at Sweden, so the Swedish women's hockey league. They have feeder systems, so they actually typically go pro at a much younger age there, but they have feeder systems in the sense that they're going through a development program from a very young age, and they're coached by people who have the certifications, the training, the understanding, the knowledge, all of those things, and they're going through this development program, more or less, with the clubs.
And again, [00:11:00] I only know a certain amount. I don't claim to know everything by any means at all, but that's been the way I see it, whereas like at home, my experience was like I was bouncing around from team to team to team, not really staying in one organization in the hopes and aim of getting to that next level.
So I, for me personally, that meant like I was playing youth in Brantford where I grew up Ended up going to Haldwin County, playing for a couple of seasons and then bounced over to Stony Creek for two seasons before I ended up getting recruited to college and got to go and play in the varsity and e sports.
So it's definitely different for sure.
Ross Romano: In different places you've played, what was the, culture and balance like between, like, practice and games? How much time was spent in practice versus how much time was spent playing the game? An actual competitive game.
Taylor Cook: Yeah definitely different than what my experience was back home. For sure. I feel [00:12:00] like it was a lot more intense. Back home, like there's, it felt like there was a lot more pressure, at least, and that could be my perception because I was trying to get to that highest level. But for example, when I was in Norway, like, I felt that, of course people were wanting to learn and develop and stuff, but practices felt a lot more laxed than they did when I was in university.
And game days, like, weren't necessarily as structured or as strict as what I was used to playing. Same when I was playing in Kazakhstan as well. Like, practices were a little bit more intense than what they were when I was playing in Norway. But the overall requirements from the team and, like, coaching and stuff like that, I felt like they weren't necessarily, as high.
So it definitely varied where I was playing and it was also really interesting to experience the [00:13:00] cultures while playing and living there as well. So getting to learn different languages is, and getting to actually live in a foreign country for a longer period of time and actually understanding the culture a little bit more in depth rather than just going over playing there for two months and then coming home or something like that.
So I think overall it was a really enriching experience for sure.
Ross Romano: Great. So let's yeah, let's talk a bit about your coaching, your approach. So as I referenced in my intro, there's like a mental performance coaching focus here. What are some of the building blocks of mental performance, some of the components that you're typically working to help athletes develop?
Taylor Cook: Yeah, I well, my, my coaching business is called Tailored Mind. So of course it's a little bit of a play on my name, but more specifically it is because, excuse me. It is because I do tailor my coaching to the athlete. So it's not like [00:14:00] a one size fits all program and everybody's going to see the same results when they come out, because every athlete's different.
Our challenges are different. We have different strengths and weaknesses and all of these types of things. And we're all at different levels of a mental game. let's say. So when it comes to the foundational pieces, like I referenced earlier self awareness is the absolute number one thing that has to get trained because you can't fix a problem if you don't even know that it exists in the first place, you know?
So it's a bit of like the mental self awareness. So like, what am I thinking about? What are my what's my self dialogue, but also the emotional awareness too. And that's the thing about athletes is I find that, We tend to stray away from the emotional side of the game. We don't really want to talk about it.
But at the end of the day it's a really important aspect because our emotions have a very significant impact on how we're showing up physically. So being able to actually understand and recognize when [00:15:00] certain things are coming up is really important as well.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And there's almost you know, the self awareness pieces is kind of like the more self aware you become, the more you have to become. Right. You know, there's certain things, I mean, this. It comes into play with the challenges around the mental game, where there's obviously a lot of fundamental skills and actions of participating in a sport that the best way to repeat them and execute them is When you're not thinking about them.
And then when you start to think about it, that's when you start to struggle with some of those basics and then have to dive further and further into it. Right. And so, of course, there's a piece of wanting to. You know, have that awareness and that you know, that reflection and metacognition around performance to be able to identify areas of [00:16:00] opportunity, ways to improve, like, what are the things that I could be doing better and then also some areas where I think athletes are probably often missing out on.
I don't want to invite that because it's like, what if it makes me start thinking about this thing and then I can't you know, can't get into that. But is there, does that vary? I mean, based on the athlete, do you generally believe that it? Each athlete should intentionally pursue a mental performance coaching.
Does the starting point vary? I mean, I know the program and what you focus on will be personalized, but does it even vary? Are there even some athletes where you might say, don't don't get into this right now if you're not having an issue or is there always, I guess, a benefit.
Taylor Cook: Personally, I think there's always going to be a benefit. Absolutely, because the more you get to know yourself and your tendencies, and the more you're going to be able to [00:17:00] respond accordingly, rather than reacting to everything. But, of course, everybody has a different starting point. Some people are much more self aware than others.
Some people are just, they have no idea what self awareness even is. But then, like, at the end of the day, though, there's It all depends on if the athlete is ready to make those changes. So like, I can preach the importance of mental performance till I'm blue in the face, but if the athlete doesn't feel ready or if they're not open to coaching, it's not going to matter at the end of the day because whatever I will say will just go in one ear and out the other until they reach a point in their career where all of a sudden there's a wall here and they don't know how to get around it and then they'll think back, well maybe I should have been training some of these things or more open to some of those things because then I'd already be equipped with the tools to say okay This is an obstacle in my way, [00:18:00] but I'm not going to let it stop me from getting to where I want to go.
So let's look at how we can find solutions to work through this, get around it, and then keep moving forward. So, Yeah, 100%. Always, always try it, at the very least, and if you're not ready for it, then maybe right now isn't the time, but eventually, all of those tools, both in and out of sport, are going to play a huge role in how you handle those challenges.
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Ross Romano: Yeah, what might a typical routine look like? I guess as far as like what maybe some of those mental skills training exercise might be when you would work on them. I know we have had some prior conversations here around this and I think one of the things came up like that's sort of related to I think preparation and the cognitive load and what [00:19:00] performance looks like once you're in competition is when you're training, when you're practicing, that's the time to think about these things, right?
And then you are planning ahead for, okay, when I'm in the middle of a game, this is what I'm going to need to do. And you know, I'm thinking about it, I'm working on it and now I'm prepared. But kind of over the, in the course of either you know, kind of, mental performance program, or over, over the course of a particular season, like what would some of those routines look like?
How would that be kind of scheduled out and how would you focus that?
Taylor Cook: Yeah, it's a great question. I think first and foremost, building mental skills is no different than building physical skills or your on ice skills or whatever type of sport you're in. It's going to take repetition, repetition, repetition. And so being intentional about practicing these things is.
It's really important. So having to quite literally bring it to your conscious awareness. [00:20:00] So you're saying, okay, like Now I'm starting to practice this, whether I'm on the ice or whether I'm in the gym or whatever it might be, but trying to practice it in the moment so you're able to catch it in the moment and you're not having to wait until after the game and looking back and realizing like, oh yeah, like, When I took that penalty I found that I was in a really negative state afterwards, and I didn't really think about it in the moment, and I just kind of let my thoughts and my negative self-talk spiral from there, which pushed me even deeper into this negative mindset, and I wasn't able to recover from it.
Right. So Mo just like, again, just like building any sort of physical skill, its intention. We have to go figure out what the, what is our technique or let's say that's going to help us best and then practice, practice, practice, and then getting to the point where you're not consciously thinking about it.
You're just recognizing it on cue.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Are there particular areas where, like, [00:21:00] challenges typically occur around, like, mental performance specific to the sport of hockey or with athletes you've worked with in different sports, but, like, where those pain points come up where it's like, okay, I need to get some coaching on this and train on this.
Are there most common areas?
Taylor Cook: I think the most commonly sought out stuff is around building confidence and being a confident athlete. That's a hot topic for any athlete. You ask them, what's the one thing that they want to get better at? It's, Oh, I want to be more confident. Which is great. I want athletes to be confident too, but it also takes a lot of other things to build up to being a confident athlete as well.
But I would say in terms of like the requests that I get or when I'm talking with athletes and I say like, what's the number one goal you have? Besides like winning a championship or scoring more goals, usually it's I want to be a more confident athlete. So, yeah, that's for me at least [00:22:00] been my experience and the most common request.
Ross Romano: Is that does the reverse happen to like over either over confidence or you know, I know like emotional regulation is part of it. And that could come into play. I assume with aggression with, with clouded focus and judgment based on maybe being too over, over amped up, too much adrenaline, those pieces that could relate to mental skills.
How does some of that come into play?
Taylor Cook: Yeah, I mean, of course, I see that quite frequently as well. Especially especially in my male athletes more in particular, I feel like that's often I ask, okay what happened in the game? How are you feeling? Well, this happened and I felt angry or frustrated or irritated. And every athlete goes through this.
It's not just male athletes. Female athletes experience it too. But I, again, like I mentioned earlier, I find a lot of athletes have a much more difficult time identifying [00:23:00] some of the emotional aspects during the game. apart from the very extremes of like really excited, energized, or really angry and irritated.
So like being able to find the things that are happening in between as well is something that I'm working with athletes to intentionally start to train. Like, what are some of the other emotions that we're experiencing and what could this possibly mean? And then I think outside of The emotional side too like having more consistent motivation levels.
So some days it's like, Well, yeah, I guess I'll play like I'm not really in the mood or I'm not really like feeling where I need to be playing at my best. And then there's other days where I'm just like dialed in, ready to go, focused and like really amped up and motivated to play.
So I see a wide range of athletes and where they're at in their performance.
Ross Romano: How do you tune into from a from a [00:24:00] social, emotional, right? Aesthetic perspective to what maybe an athlete needs at a given time and how that might also lay along with what the head coach of their team needs. Like, for example, let's say you have, an athlete who keeps trying to make, passes that they really can't make successful, right? And maybe they need like some mental training around, like, you're going to be more successful and effective in what you want to do if you stop trying to attempt this thing. And if you instead do this, which in some ways could be seen as, or felt as, for people.
an individual, depending on their mindset at a given time or what they're going through, felt as a lack of confidence. Like, this is not something that you're going to be able to do successfully. Or it could be taken as, [00:25:00] okay, this is a strategy that's going to help you be more successful because instead of trying to do this one thing that is outside of your skill set, you're going to instead do this other thing that is productive.
But I assume it's not with most people. That message may not necessarily be received the same every single day, right? One day they might be receptive and say, okay, I can focus on this and do it. There might be another day where they're frustrated by it or where it makes them feel like they're losing confidence.
But there's also the piece of outside of the mental skills part, there's the coach. of the team who might want to inflate their confidence in a certain way. So how, I mean, all those dynamics, right? How do you approach it as far as how you kind of try to get on that that wavelength with an individual you're coaching and determine, okay, what's the right time to try to coach them on this?
How are [00:26:00] they reacting to it? How do we get to the conclusion of I want them to grasp this concept, right, and work on this skill without it being something that diminishes their confidence and ability to do it.
Taylor Cook: So. First, I just need to make sure I understand, like, you want to know how I'm working with individual athletes and also catering to what the coach is looking for from them as well?
Ross Romano: Yeah, I guess let's just start with one, we can start with one piece of it at a time. Like, how do you go about the process of really, like, tapping into what one of your athletes, like their personality and what they need at a given time, right? In a given day, like how they're reacting to what you're coaching them on and how you're making sure that they're taking productive lessons out of it versus unintended things when, of course, there's going to be times you have to coach them on something that is might frustrate [00:27:00] them.
Taylor Cook: Yeah, good question. So, at the moment, I'll say, like, with my individual athletes, It's all based off of the feeling and like the information that I have as to like where it is that they're struggling at the moment, where they're, we talk about strengths and weaknesses and stuff when we first meet where they feel they're at.
I don't see any sort of game clips from them especially with the younger athletes. I, there's just no, no availability for it. But we're working through these every single week. So it's, Kind of like a slow, like dipping your toe into the waters type of experience for the athlete to start out and then it's slowly introducing like more and more tools.
So we'll work with a few tools to start out once we have the foundational set in place. So talking self awareness and emotional awareness. what those actually are, and then working on identifying those things and practicing those things in real time, then we get [00:28:00] into the more specific tools where that foundation's there.
So we can actually start to work on how we can be more focused. And we start to pay attention to what's going on during practices or before practices that could be contributing to, let's say, our emotional responses. Or the type of you know, state that we're in during practice or how we're responding to specific situations.
So it's really tough to give you like a concrete answer when everything truly is 100 percent to the individual and what their needs are and where they're at. Because some people learn really quickly. They can pick up on what we're talking about and be able to do the homework and the practice and implement all of these things and they catch on quick.
Other people have a much more difficult time because like I said, some people have really great self awareness. Some people are starting from rock bottom. They have no idea what it even means to be self aware. So it's really about the relationship that I'm building with the [00:29:00] individual athletes to understand where they're, excuse me, where they're currently at and what they need to get to that next level based on their current circumstances.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess like the other part of it that I'm trying to get a sense of is so in a situation where you have an individual player who comes and hires you to be their mental performance coach, and they're also part of a team where they have the coaching staff for that team and whatever that those coaches goals and plans are.
How do you typically approach that? Like, as far as how do you view your. relationship, if any to that other coaching staff. Do you want to talk to them about what they're working on? Do you just more rely on the athlete to let you know what they want to be coached on and focus on that? Because I I know there's a lot of cases.
One, I mean, it's potential that they're They could be getting some mixed messages and could cause confusion, but also where [00:30:00] sometimes, right, the coach of a team is unhappy with individual athletes on their team going out and hiring other coaches for things, or they're skeptical of what they're working on, or potentially, I mean, there could be times where they feel like it's working at cross purposes.
But I guess, how do you choose to navigate that part? And yeah, tell me,
Taylor Cook: Yeah, I haven't actually had any issues, to be completely honest. I mean, if an individual athlete wants to get coaching It's not up to their coach to say whether they can or can't. I mean, it's different if the coach and the team has someone that they're paying for you to go to, but at the end of the day, it's the athlete's choice.
So like, I don't talk with the coaches about anything that I'm talking about with my athletes. It's one on one, it's confidential. It's. Just the two of us. So I, I don't communicate with their coaches and their coaches aren't communicating with me. So it's solely [00:31:00] based off of my work with the athlete, what they're saying to me, what happening in their experience from their perspective, and trying to broaden their perspective by challenging some of those thoughts and what's going on in their experience.
So, for example I know there was an athlete who felt that. The coach was trying to, like, sabotage them, was kind of their thinking process, their perspective, and, like, they had goals to get to Division I where they're II, and so felt like they were being thrown into a lot of situations where they weren't really excelling or weren't really performing their best because that's not where their strengths lie.
Okay, that's one perspective that you can take from that. For sure, it's really easy to take that perspective. So I've tried to play devil's advocate and push back a little bit and say, Okay, did you ever think that you've already talked to your coach, they know what your goals are, but do you [00:32:00] think that they're trying to actually develop you further as a player by getting you to step outside that comfort zone and work on improving your weaknesses?
So they're a little bit more on the strength side and you're actually going to be a better athlete and be able to move up into division one, right? And by sharing a different perspective and giving them a different way of thinking about their experience, they were able to realize that My coach isn't actually working against me.
They're working for me and I just need to get out of my own way. I
Ross Romano: And given that most teams don't necessarily have performance staff in house it's something that players would seek elsewhere. And sometimes maybe there's a little more conflict when it comes to actual physical skills, right? And and Each team, each sport has certain philosophies and approaches and the way they teach things and they may have an athlete that they say, okay, before next [00:33:00] season, we need you to work on this, right?
And however you choose to do that, like, I, we want you to come better next season being improved in this area. There might be other cases where it's something that an athlete is going out and getting. other coaching on something and it's being taught completely in opposition to the team's philosophy on that thing.
And then there's some, could be some friction. But but the mental skills piece is separate from that. Is there anything like if you did talk to, let's say a head coach and they were like, well why should I want my athletes to do this or I'm not sure do they really need to like that you would say to them this is how it benefits them.
This is why it's a good thing that you have an athlete on your team that's seeking this mental performance coaching.
Taylor Cook: would be really shocked if a coach said that they didn't want to have a mental performance coach in house. I think a major reason why a lot of them don't is because either they're A, stuck in the past or B, [00:34:00] they don't have the financial backing for it. And most oftentimes it's B, sometimes it's A, but just depends on where you're at.
Right. But, I mean, by working with a mental coach, again, you're able to better understand yourself. You're going to develop tools that allow you to handle different situations and actually perform through them rather than letting it completely derail your game. So you're going to be able to have better focus, more motivation, confidence.
You're going to be able to, be more consistent in your play as well. And that's, if not anything else, coaches should definitely want it because their athletes will be more consistent. And that's again, another thing that I hear a lot from athletes is, I want to be more consistent. Well, how do we actually get to that space and place?
And it's difficult. Because everybody's different, everybody needs different things before games and before performing, so it's about experimentation at the end of the day. Took me a long [00:35:00] time to get to a point where I understood what my game day routine was, and it changed over the years. So in university it was one way, in pro it was completely different, so it just, yeah.
Ross Romano: So, one, one other thing I wanted to ask is about visualization techniques because I, this is something that I think can be really powerful in, in all areas of performance, sports or otherwise. But would love to hear from you a little bit about, like, what are some of the techniques that you use or or coach athletes on that you believe are really effective?
Taylor Cook: Yeah, I think the one that I really enjoy doing the most is kind of like their 10 out of 10 performance script. So actually getting them to sit down and script out what it actually looks like and feels like to be playing the perfect performance for them. And getting into the emotions of it, getting into the physiology of it, and actually trying to experience that [00:36:00] through your visualization, right?
So, not just sitting there and yeah, seeing it, but actually getting into everything. You can, like, feel it in your body when you're doing it. Even, like, closing my eyes, thinking about mine. I have, like, little chills rolling down my spine because that's how it is when you make a big save and you're like, Super amped up and like it feels so good.
Right. So actually getting into the emotional side of that visualization is definitely one of the main things that I want my athletes to do is because it gets more into like the physicality and the emotion and you just feel it more deeply in your body as an athlete. And I know that there's like studies around this and how visualization when you're pairing it with.
actual physical skill training, it does actually improve at a faster rate. So there's also scientific backing around visualization as well. So yeah it's great for athletes, both [00:37:00] well, not just athletes, great for everybody. It's also really good for athletes too.
Ross Romano: right, right. And there's I mean, there's a unique element with respect to athletics that there's fewer limits on how much you can work on those techniques, right? You know, you can practice a certain amount, but there's fatigue, there's injury, there's there's times when you have to rest your body.
From the physical practice, but you could still be using your visualization techniques to prepare for what you want to do in competition and using them in combination and really developing the mindset of really using whenever you are doing that, the physical practice time to, to imagine and visualize what that really means when, once you're in competition, the more prepared you are.
Taylor Cook: Well, it's also something I've actually done going through rehab and injury as well. So I, that was a very unique and quite interesting experience, [00:38:00] but I had an MCL reconstructive surgery in 2021 and it was about a nine month rehab process, but part of my own personal let's say like rehab. From the mental side, I wanted to make sure that I was actually visualizing my knee healing and like, and actually making sure I was still visualizing some of those movements and what I needed to do from a goalie's position.
And I felt like it had a huge impact. on how I recovered because it was originally projected to be like a nine month recovery time and I was back on the ice in eight, right? So not saying it's a cure for injury by any means but I think it definitely does help for sure.
Ross Romano: Yeah, absolutely. So Taylor, it's been great talking to you. Before we wrap up here I referenced again in the intro, you host the Athletic Mind podcast, and I think that's something some of our listeners may be interested in as well. You know, [00:39:00] who do you typically talk to? What do you discuss?
Taylor Cook: Yeah. I mean, I talked to a pretty wide range of guests. A lot of them are either current or former female athletes. And I've also had some really amazing coaches on there as well. Some solo episodes every now and then talking about different, more targeted topics, but usually I love to have guests come on and share their experience and how they develop their mental side of the game and to yeah, inspire the next generation
Ross Romano: Excellent. So, listeners, you can find the podcast where you get your podcast, search for it, The Athletic Mind. We'll also put that in the link below and you can learn more about Taylor's work and her mental performance coaching at her website, tayloredminds. com. We'll put the link to that so you don't have to worry about the spelling.
You can click right on over to it if you want to learn more about her work, if you're in the market for a little bit of performance coaching, or if you're a coach just wanting to kind of learn more about the [00:40:00] process, how it can maybe benefit your athletes, do check that out. If you're not already, check it out.
I'll see you next week. Please do subscribe to Sidelight Sessions. We're going to continue to bring you insights from coaches across the sporting landscape, lots of different conversations, all the different things that will help you be effective in your job, develop your student athletes and and have more success.
Taylor, thanks again so much for being here.
Taylor Cook: now. Thanks for having me.