ProDeflect Product design: our expertise
- All ProDeflect products have been designed by ProDeflect Owner and professional goalkeeper coach of over 23 years James Hollman.
- Each product has been tested at the highest level on the training grounds of Premier league & Championship football clubs. These locations were a place where interaction with fellow professional goalkeepers and coaches gave us a significant advantage and helped us refine our designs so they perform just how goalkeeper want them to.
- Once the designs were complete we employed manufactures in the UK, Pakistan & China to produce products of the highest standards using skilled trades people.
Key Features
- Safety
- When we first embarked on this project we sort advice from many different sources and the one point that was emphasised to us continuously was Safety. Our products are unusual in that football travel through them and have the potential to knock broken or faulty parts towards the goalkeeper. Of course any object knocked towards the goalkeeper is a danger and can be a distraction that effects technique. ProDeflect has been built so you can train with confidence and focus 100% on the ball knowing it will be the only thing heading the goalkeepers way.
- Durability
- With safety our primary concern it was essential that we produce products that are safe. As a result of this our products are extremely durable and so much so we know you will not buy these twice because you won’t have to. They are designed and use materials that not only perfect for the intended use but also can survive transport and storage. We are so confident in out product durability that we offer a life time guarantee on all of our products and in the very unlikely event of product failure we will replace the product or the individual part for free.
Performance Features
- Unpredictability / Predictability
- We do not want a deflection every time!!! The deflections themselves are a problem but in actual fact from a goalkeepers point of view it is the threat of a deflection that is the biggest issue. The psychological element that ProDeflect brings to your training is very difficult to portray in our videos but it is a crucial part of the design.
- In training and games situations arise where shots can be hit towards large groups of bodies and on first look we could say ‘that shot is very likely to get a deflection’ but then it doesn’t. That is the situation, both physical and psychological that ProDeflect recreates in your training, see the shot, react to it as if it will NOT be deflected and if it does then and only then readjust, recover, react to the deflection.
- With many products of a similar nature when the ball is aimed at the product the goalkeeper knows with 100% certainty that the ball will be taking a deflection, there is no doubt, it is predictable and in some cases over time the goalkeeper can learn what is going to happen. From our experience of goalkeeping and football we knew that this predictability must be removed if we are to create a useful training aid because with out this element the equipment is not really useful and will actually be detrimental to the goalkeepers that use it.
- To remove the opportunities to anticipate the deflection and type of deflection that would be encountered our products are designed to create uncertainty and unpredictability. We wanted deflections but not every time a ball travelled toward the equipment. Will it or won’t it? If it does what will happen?
- It took some time and experimenting but we got there and everyone one of our products produces this uncertainty and functions in a manner that demands high levels of concentration and performance from those who use them.
- Effectiveness
- Another issue identified with many deflection products was the poor level of versatility in terms of percentage of deflections and useful deflections. To achieve a deflection that the goalkeeper could deal with needed very accurate service in terms of pace and direction. If the pace was too much it would often result in a deflection so big the goalkeeper would be watching the ball fly past the goal. Equally there is a very small target area to achieve a useful deflection and more often than not there is no deflection or a deflection too big. The result is service that is so slow the deflection is easily predicted. Our products do not need accurate or a specific pace of service to achieve a deflection that the goalkeeper will have two deal with, just kick as you like and something will happen to challenge the goalkeeper.
Set Up and Transportation
- We know that coaches often work at multiple venues so our products are designed to be easily assembled and disassembled and are compact enough when stored to be easily transported.