It isn’t your biceps, your quads, or anything physical.
After ten years of professional hockey, over 500 games, four years of Division I college hockey, and a lifetime spent chasing the dream, I’ve had plenty of time to think about what separates the players who make it from the players who disappear.
It isn’t always talent.
It isn’t size, speed, or strength.
The most important muscle a hockey player can build isn’t found in your arms or your legs.
It’s the mental muscle called resilience.
Resilience is the ability to keep going long after most people would have quit.
You get cut from a team?
Find another tryout.
You have a terrible practice?
Come back the next day.
You play the best game of your life?
Enjoy it for a moment, then get back to work.
Good game or bad game. Victory or defeat. Rain or shine.
You keep showing up.
That was the trait that carried me through almost a decade of professional hockey and eventually into the NHL with the Boston Bruins.
There was no single workout, game, coach, or opportunity that made my career.
It was the slow, methodical burn of showing up over days, weeks, months, and years.
I became like mold growing in the corner of an old hockey rink.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
No matter what happened, I was going to show up the next day, act like a professional, do everything required of me, and then find a way to go above and beyond.
When I look back at the players around me who built long, successful careers, they all had that same quality.
They were resilient.
They could take a bad game without falling apart. They could take a demotion without giving up. They could survive injuries, slumps, criticism, trades, and uncertainty.
Then they would lace up their skates and get back to work.
You build resilience by doing the work today—and returning tomorrow to do it again.
That’s also why having the right tools matters.
The Puckaround Pro Training Puck allows you to work on your hands, passing, and puck control almost anywhere. You don’t need perfect ice, a full practice, or someone reminding you to train.
All you need is a surface, a stick, a puck, and the willingness to show up.
Get your Puckaround and start putting in the work.
Because one workout won’t make you a hockey player.
But thousands of workouts, stacked together through years of resilience, might take you somewhere you never thought possible.
On Wednesday, I’m going to share the second-biggest lesson I learned during my career.
It was the trait that allowed me to enter a new locker room at almost every level and make myself valuable enough to stay.
Because getting an opportunity is one thing.
Making yourself too valuable to get rid of is something else entirely.
I’ll tell you how I did it Wednesday.
Bobby Robins, savage motivator, NHL Alum, Writer for Wraparound
P.S. Talent might get you noticed, but it won’t guarantee that you survive. Wednesday’s lesson is about how you make coaches, teammates, and organizations feel like they need you in the lineup.
Grab a Puckaround before Wednesday and keep building>>>