What My Dad Knew

When I was growing up, my dad would not let me play hockey for the entire summer. Yes, three full months.

Not partially. Not "you can do a little." A real break. The kind of break where the skates went into a closet and stayed there for weeks. The kind of break where I had to go figure out what to do with myself because hockey was not on the calendar.

I did not understand it at the time. I would get angry. I wanted to play. My friends were skating. There were camps I could have gone to, leagues I could have joined, tournaments I could have entered. Other parents would have signed their kids up for any or all of it.

He still said no.

I remember being annoyed. Frustrated. A little embarrassed that other kids were getting more reps than I was. I assumed I was falling behind. I assumed he did not understand what it took to be good.

I was wrong.

He understood exactly what it took to be good. That is precisely why he made me stop.

I want to talk about rest in this piece, because I think we have lost the plot a little in youth sports. And I want to talk about it from two perspectives. The athlete I was, and the adult I have become.

The athlete perspective first.

I now know that those summers off were the reason I lasted. I played Division I hockey, then professionally, and the body and mind that got me there were not the body and mind of an athlete who never stopped. They were the body and mind of an athlete who had been given permission to rest, repeatedly, throughout her development. Permission to come back hungry instead of grinding through fatigue. Permission to miss the sport. Permission to be more than a hockey player for a few months a year.

Research has caught up with what my dad knew intuitively. Athletes who specialize too early, or who never fully step away from their sport and participate in other things, are at significantly higher risk for overuse injuries, burnout, and dropout. Athletes who never fully step away often hit walls in their late teens and early twenties that look like loss of motivation, loss of love for the game, or worse, the slow collapse of an identity that was built entirely on a single thing.

Pro athletes talk about this all the time. The ones who have had long careers will tell you, in interview after interview, that the rest is what made them. The off-seasons. The injuries that forced them to step back. The moments when they had to remember who they were when they were not playing.

The ones who are most articulate about it almost always say a version of the same thing. The sport is what you do. It is not who you are. And if you do not know the difference, the sport will eventually break you.

Now the adult perspective.

I am taking my own break this summer. Not from hockey. From the business of running a business. The content. The strategy. The always-on building of something that has quietly started taking more from me than it gives back.

I am stepping back so I can spend more time with my family and pour myself into what I love most. The coaching. The actual work with athletes. My absolute favorite part of it all.

This is not a small thing for me to do. The version of me that built this business does not naturally take rest. The version of me that I am right now is realizing that not taking rest has been quietly costing me my relationship with the work I love most.

That is the same thing that happens to athletes who never step away from their sport.

The line between caring deeply about something and being consumed by it is thinner than most people realize. The way to maintain it is not willpower. It is a rhythm. Periods of full engagement followed by periods of real rest.

The athletes who are still playing at the highest levels in their thirties did not get there by working harder than everyone else year-round. They got there by knowing when to pause.

If you have an athlete in your house who has not had a real break in a while, I want to invite you to think about this. Not as a lecture. As a question.

When was the last time they were truly off?

Not "lighter training." Not "less travel but still going." Off. Bored. Free. Allowed to be a kid who is not also an athlete in development.

If you cannot remember, that is information.

Same goes for you, by the way. When was the last time you were actually off?

The season will be there when you come back.

The athletes I respect most are the ones who learn how to rest as well as they learn how to compete. That rest is a part of their training program. That skill, like every other mental performance skill, is trainable.

It just has to start with someone giving them permission.

My dad gave me that permission every summer.

I am grateful for it now in a way I could not have been then.

Pay it forward if you can.