Welcome to MentalGoalies.com. A site that is about being razorsharp between the ears.

On this part of the site you can find a little more information on MentalGoalies and on the author of the e-book, which you can find in the Downloads section and offers support in dealing with distractions.

MentalGoalies

MentalGoalies feels that 80% of a goalie's performance depends on mental skills. And MentalGoalies wants to enable goaltenders to get better in goaltending through improving their mental skills. In order to do so, as a starting point, it's necessary that the relevance of mental toughness is agreed upon.

MentalGoalies guesses that everyone knows the feeling of ´having a bad day´. These ´bad days´ don´t go together with bringing that extra edge to your task between the posts. Probably it´s fair to say that on those days, goals are more likely to occur (and feeling bad about it, comes with it....for free).

On the other hand every once in a while you might have a hot streak. A match where it all ties together neatly. To MentalGoalies that´s a day where your full potential has surfaced. Most likely you felt composed, sharp and dedicated that day.

To help goalies reaching their full potential MentalGoalies aimes for mental agility and mental skills. Understanding what´s in your way and ways to overcome these hurdles. That´s what MentalGoalies is about!

The author, Francesco Staps.

I started my career between the posts where they were 7.32 mtr apart...in soccer.

I can't recall exactly what put me there but my educated guess is: wanting to make a difference (not being 1 out of 11), not being a brilliant player, little less obliged to serve. It was good fun but after some seasons I switched to fieldhockey.

Since I had already found out that goaltending fitted me like a glove, it didn't take a lot of considering where I wanted to be on the field.

And the hockey game felt even more intuitive for me: smaller ball, more reflexes and kicking and diving had become a 2nd nature (with my background in soccer). I enjoyed every second: training, games, tournaments. Looking back it took much more courage with the degree of protection that was available then....

And there it stops for a while: with the loss of my mom, I also lost structure. My teenage life became a mess and it intermitted my sporting ambitions. I stopped playing hockey and many other sports came by: my skills became handy especially in volleyball and table tennis.

They didn't bring me much in mountain biking and cycling ;-)

It wasn't until university that I picked up on goaltending again: playing indoor-soccer [apparently once you start goaltending there's no way around being between the posts].

Then you meet a beautiful girl, marry her and you get kids.

They grow up and you get your fair share from them: I found myself on the hockeygrounds again. It was funny to experience that although they had never seen me playing hockey, all 3 our sons felt attracted to the game. Our daughter let me down.....she chose to do gymnastics ;-)

It didn't take long before I started helping out as a coach and as a goalie trainer.

I had grown 40 to find out that old habits die slowly! It was great under the crossbar again. And lots came back, almost by itself.

Surprisingly I also found out that my professional career had made me a better goaltender: apparently I had picked up some qualities that gave me an extra edge. (In the end) It wasn't hard to figure out that my mindset was responsible for this development.

And that's where this story links to the e-book!

Looking for information on the dependency of athletic performance from mental skills, it became more and more clear how I improved without spending loads of hours in the goal.

 

But: there's still a missing piece....why write something about this topic?

This relates to 2 concepts that are frequently used in marketing: push and pull strategies. With a 'push' strategy you force the message upon the marketplace. With 'pull' you respond upon requests and/or searches.

Participating in mental training is not 2nd nature for many people: they feel insecure for some reason or another. Nothing wrong there, just a little more challenging to get the message across.
By writing something down that I could offer the goalies I train, the pull mechanism was facilitated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this an OBO-mule? Investigating the feasability of diversification?? Who knows? By the way: the mule-part is correct....