Feeling lonely can be detrimental to the goalie's performance.....

In what way could he feel lonely?

• as a loner, since he's the only one holding a position within the group. A position that is not so well understood by some players and coaches. A position that is not so much valued by some players and coaches. There are many examples to these statements but one I like in particular: I bet they hardly are aware that in a practice where the player practice on a skill and end with a shot on goal, the goalie has to deal with 12 to 15 players practicing 5 times each totalling up to roughly 60 actions in the same time frame as they do 5 actions each.............
• When instructions are given by the trainer during practice, hardly ever the goalie is present. Partly because the goalie decides that there's no value to come over to the group, partly because the goalie's presence is not valued by the group.
  I'd say this reflects 'bad practice': being a part of the team, goalies should be present at group-instructions. The players and coach can learn from his observations as well!
• In practice it's often observed that offensive actions are being practiced, with no/low defensive activity. This doesn't represent a game-like situation to player nor goalie. You could even discuss whether settings like these engrain the desired behaviour that the team as a whole is dedicated to prevent scoring!
• In games, a goalie can feel very lonely when his team doesn't show
  • willingness to do their jobs in defensive scenarios, especially when players 'refuse' to tackle back (for whatever reason)!!
  • improvement in the quality of their defensive actions, e.g. passing through the centre after an interception in stead of making the game
  • willingness to respond to the goalie's instructions/directions
• When a goal is made by our team: the team, most of the times, will celebrate the moment of success. Regularly limited to a small group of forwards. Seldomly the goalie will get involved.
• When we are being scored upon at best players will give a constructive remark and at least.....we all know what can occur
  Great instructions and observations, like a loud yell from the sideline "you could have stopped that one" will definitely help to improve performance.
• After the last whistle has sounded, it's not exactly a given fact that all wil gather at the goalie and leave/celebrate together.

And in fieldhockey it is not uncommon that the majority of the players are already off the field (and in the clubhouse?) when a single soul (hardly ever accompanied by another soul) is still 'peeling off' his gear......

So: there are many ways that goalies can feel lonely. There's a part where we, as goalies, hold responsibility to hook up with the team to show that we want to be part of it AND there's a part the we need to be included by others.

And most definitely our preformance can be lowered or boosted by the level that we experience the outcome to be a team-effort or not!!

Good goalkeeping again.

Hi,

I feel it's only fair to start this entry with an apology from my side. Sorry for the delay with new blogpostings.

It has been busy, I would even say very busy, these last months. Not only in a professional sense as specialist in niche-marketing & niche-sales, also in a personal sense as a lot ado at home and in a sporting sense with the roll out of new sessions and initiatives.

During the last quarter I got involved in 2 great goalie initiatives:

• the RHKS from Pirmin Blaak and Jan Lelieveldt
  
  
• the Xmas goaliecamp from Tim Knudsen

The three of them acknowledge the value of mental aspects to become a better goalie or said differently: things between your ear can will influence the performance between the posts.

What struck me during this period was a theme that popped up over and over again: We are talking about an (early) (bad) goal.
What I mean by that is: an early goal, a bad goal or even (better forbid) an early bad goal.

The occurance of bad a/o early goals does something to the goalies mind......like

• lose confidence
• introduce doubt
• negative self-speak
• fear of failure
• feeling of being judged upon negatively
• remarks from teammates
• brilliant tips on how to prevent this next time.......

Now I could fill tonnes of blogspace on all this possible outings , and there are many more, but in the end it comes down to 1 thing and one thing only: GET OVER IT! You can't change a d*****d thing about it anymore & you want to perform at your best in the remainder.

More easily typed than done you might think. To some extent that might be true, but it's not that complicated.
There are some tips you can enroll strictly to make it happen:

• Evaluations are great: should be done, good stuff to learn from.
  Evaluations are in place: ONCE THE GAME IS OVER!!
• Strong emotions tend to take a goalie out of the flow
  KEEP IT FACTUAL: we were scored upon; that can happen (for now; all is allowed at evaluations)
• NEGATIVE self-speak needs to be shut down (this applies to ALL SITUATIONS and especially upon bad goals)
  Get back to being concentrated on the here & now
• setting UNREALISTIC goals, since these are killing for all goalies
  unrealistic as in: a goal that's outside the goalies full control (not being scored upon is a bad goal in that sense; there are situations that we can do everything to the best of our abilities and still not being able to prevent a player or team from scoring!!)

What it comes down to: RESET yourself. as if you were starting the game. Give your head a temporary option to get back to the (powerful) feeling you had on entering the game. It's back to "0 - 0" and regain your power and mindset from that starting point.
Funny? Silly? Childish? Or just a workable alternative to all of the 'standard' events, as mentioned above??

One last note on realistic goalsetting:
I do promise that my entries for 2012 will come more frequently: I'm aiming for 10 entries on regular basis.Is that the subject for this note: me apologizing?
Nope. Although there's something to take out of my promise.
By defining a goal, the likeliness that you could reach it rises...
By making it explicite (as in: writing it down), it gets out of your head and can be looked upon & read
By sharing (as in: letting others know what your target is), you commit yourself to a bigger extent
So: setting a goal is a good thing. Make it realistic but challenging. Have the gut to write it down and spread your news! Chances are that you might meet your goal without particular notice, but that's not a rule of thumb! It might still be necessary to give the process a good deal of your attention.

Good netminding over the holidays!

Who doesn't recognize the situation in which a goalkeeper performs better in practice than in games or the other way round?

Either way, this has to do with intention.
And with intention I mean something like a mind set that the goalkeeper brings to the field, either at practice or at games.

Sit1: Performance in games is way ahead of performance in practice.
Most probable cause is that the goalkeeper isn't psyched up for practice. This might be a result of feeling less pressurized, rating practice at a lower value just being plain tired. Obviously there are more causes, but the solution mostly comes down to the same ;-).

By being less sharp in practice, the goalkeeper slows down his learning-curve! As an example: in stead of picking up 3 learning points at practice, he will go home with only 1 point learned. Same time invested, less outcome.

And hopefully is this awareness, that the goalkeeper diminishes his own growth-speed, enough to lead to a change in mind set.

Come to practice with the eagerness of a spunge, the willingness to learn and all the energy (& enthusiasm) you have available. Give it all you got and you'll get better at a higher rate!

Sit2: Performance in practice is above game-bound performance.
It seems fair to say that this has to do with pressure and/of fear. The fear of being judged upon (and rated "too light"), the pressure of 'having to perform'....and more. Most of these thoughts are 'homebrewed': the thought-processes take place in the minds of the goalkeepers. Obviously there's only one person that can pressurize the goalie, and that's that same goalie. So relieve yourself of the pressure.

Maybe more easily said than done ;P. In a nutshell my advice would be something like this (and this is how I deal with it myself, by the way):

I perform at my best when I'm relaxed (that doesn't mean laid back :-) ) and having fun. That means that I have to be in the here and now. The means you could apply here is focussing on your breath. Tell yourself things like: "I'm loving it between the posts", "I love the ball & the ball loves me; that's why I keep on getting 'em", "this is great; I couldn't think of anything better doing right now".

In general: Support every successfull action with positive anchor-movements (like you can see how tennisplayers encourage themselves) and ignore weaker moments (as in: evaluations are done AFTERWARDS so just let go)

Good goalkeeping & till next posting!