Finding Zen - The ball, the kicking tee and the posts

While Munster lost out on a place in the Heineken Champions Cup semi-final at the weekend, it reminded me just how addictive an art form that goal kicking really is.

Someone like Ben Healy would have been practicing his kicking routine all week.

Sometimes that week involves finding a flow state and never really thinking about the process because it's just working for you.

Your nerves for the weekend are much less when you’ve had a good kicking week in training. Other weeks you’re fighting the mental turmoil of a few millimetres.

Your standing foot might be landing a centimetre in the wrong place, and it could have an effect on the outcome of your goal kick.

You fight all week for the perfect process to put your standing foot in the right position to give you the right hip width to swing your foot freely through the ball.

You can get caught up in overthinking your starting step, whether you take a starting step with your kicking foot and then get moving, or whether you’re better off just getting on the move with your opposite foot.

You do all this thinking during the week to try to put yourself in the right head space by the time the match comes around and yet your biggest focus is still on getting out to the warm-up early so you can see what kind of day you’re about to have.

Of course, the practice in your warm-up isn’t always an indicator of how you react under pressure.

Sometimes you can have a few iffy kicks before the match and once the real pressure comes on you resort to the level of practice that you found over the last weeks and months.

Other times you might think you found a sweet spot during the week and all of a sudden you miss your first kick in the match and thoughts quickly flow through your mind in an attempt to fix