In Dutch there’s a saying like “wie schrijft, die blijft”. The meaning is something like: “what’s written down, remains”, a kind of legacy-statement.

Let’s look what’s in this pearl of old dutch wisdom for goalies…..

The sheer act of writing forces you to think.
Think about a lot of things:

• What to write down
• How to write it down
• Why you write it down
• Is this isolated or linked content
• Main issue or detail

On all these topics awareness comes into play to a smaller or larger degree. In order to be aware you have to consider and reflect on actions and events. In other words you have to rewind the movie and possibly even change perspectives to get a clear view of what was going on.

In one way or another your recent actions wil be reviewed and/or reframed. By writing about the events you can distance yourself from the internal representation (the mental footage) and your impressions, review of evaluation can become tangible/discrete. Simply by reconsidering and writing the learning can take place and can cristallize in your note-book.

It makes good sense to take journalling serious: if done regularly you can ‘follow up’ on your own development, strenghts, pitfalls and so on.
Over time you might even consider using a kind of format.
That could look like answering the same questions every time:

• What took place | happened?
• How do I look back on the event?
• What was my specific learning moment | moment of insight?
• What was satisfying | good?
• What could undergo some tweaking | improving?
• How could the improvement be realised?
• What can I do?
• What do I need from others?
• What am I going to do with this?

The last question aims for actions: both short and longterm based.
And your journal becomes extremely valuable to you if you incorporate your planning & goals. That is: if you ever read it over and re-think your findings and actions ;-)

Journalling is a great tool to accelerate your development-curve. Make it a habit to write down your plan at the beginning of the season and follow up on it during season.
Make journal entries after every training and game. Take your responsibility in your development and tell your trainer what you want to your work on. You get my guarantee that goalkeeping will improve in many ways and being between the posts will feel better and better! Good goalkeeping ;-)