A new manager, a staff of coaches renewed with quality and a mental trainer to look to the future trying to take new paths. Neptune Baseball renews itself, accepts challenges, and grows by innovating! For the first time in its history, the City of Baseball Club shows up at the starting line of SerieA with a Mental Trainer on its coaching staff. Role that will be entrusted to Cristiano Castaldi who already boasts important experiences in the sector. Let’s get to know Cristiano Castaldi better in this interview released exclusively to Baseballmania:
The Neptune Baseball therefore presents itself to the 2022 season with a great novelty. A mental coach on his staff. To you the honor of being the first in the history of Neptune baseball. What are your feelings about this assignment?
“Honestly, at the first contact between the parties – declares Cristiano Castaldi – I experienced it as a normal job offer. Demand, supply, objectives. When I had the first meeting at the venue, something changed, finding around me some players who made us dream and a lot of passion from the managers. There was almost no negotiation, in the sense that at a certain point I felt that, as a citizen and a fan, I could not refuse. It’s a bit like feeling in the right place at the right time.
I feel proud to be the first, but above all motivated to give what I can, with everyone else, to get Neptune back to being totally competitive “.
Baseball is perhaps one of the sports where the mental approach has a relevant value, if only for the fact that it is a team sport where individuality has an enormous specific weight. See the role of pitcher and the shifts in batting where the whole team is represented in the batting box alone. Will it therefore be an even more challenging challenge for you?
“Each sport has its specificity and therefore its relative approach to mental training. Let’s say that by now there is no longer any doubt that the mental environment must be implemented and trained. This places mental training at least on the same level as technical and physical training. Baseball has its strong character, given by the change of role in the two phases of attack and defense, in the speed of execution and repetition of the gesture, in the long pauses in the dugout and in the phases of partial stand by in the defense roles. All situations in which a high concentration rate is required. Not being a contact sport, the level of adrenaline and therefore of attention tends to drop and the request for focus is very high. Players say 90% of baseball is mental. Even if those percentages weren’t, of course baseball is played on the details. It is a sport inside or out. All or nothing. Which is no escape if you are not mentally prepared for focus and if there are no pre-requisites for emotional well-being. It is highly individual despite being a team sport, so the responsibility is considerably concentrated in the few moments in which it is called into question “.
What aspects of your sector do you think we should work immediately with the team group?
“I made it clear to the club, managers and players right from the start that I have three types of goals: well-being, performance, results. In spite of the classic coaching that works above all on performance objectives and results, I also believe a lot in the work of emotional support of the athlete / man, capable of increasing self-esteem, empowerment and consequently self-efficacy on the field.
We have already started this work with group and individual sessions and the responses of the students confirm that the path is right. We will soon begin training and therefore the work will also shift to techniques inherent to the moments of competition with specific exercises for the various roles “.
The Neptune roster is young, there are athletes still in the midst of their athletic development. Will this make your job easier? And how crucial will it be for the future growth of these kids?
“The roster is young, it is true, even if there are players who have already gained experience abroad or in other top Italian teams. The young player is certainly more open and curious than a new job like this. The new generations are more ready for innovative approaches. On the other hand, the experienced player helps more to filter and orient the needs of the team. For their growth, in my opinion, it will be a decisive job as we will put in their toolbox tools that they can always use, throughout their career, during every game, every inning. Launch by launch.
It is the third way of training, together with the technical and physical one “.
Is there a “magic formula” to build a winning team? How much does this “formula” depend on the mentality and mind of athletes, coaches and why not managers?
“Every manager has always known the magic formula – continues Cristiano Castaldi – every player, every journalist and every fan at the start of the season. It is obvious and consolidated: Organization, good players, motivation. Easy to think so. And maybe to say so. It is less easy to adopt a consistent and constant method to work on that coordinates everyone on common goals. If the ideas are not clear or are not shared, the very good will with which every sports club starts a season often breaks down on the lack of effective tools to counteract the criticisms.
The winning mentality can be a natural gift and this makes a player a champion. But in the vast majority of cases, you learn during your career, if you are on the road, good teachers in the locker room, in the dog out, in training. With mental training we can certainly improve all of these areas. The company, it seems to me, has taken a clear path on this, with a more open and professional vision “.
Is it more correct to say Mental Coach or Mental Trainer?
“Both are right! The mental coach in sport almost exclusively uses American style motivational coaching. I like Mental Trainer more because in addition to Coaching I also use other techniques deriving from my training as a Body Mediation Counselor and Sports Psychology expert alongside knowledge of anatomy and physiology that come from my knowledge as a Physiotherapist and Osteopath. I am tied and I believe more to a biopsychosocial model that has its roots in the classicism and truths of the Philosophy and Psychology of the Old Continent.
The profession is in great ferment and transformation and I believe the best is yet to come. What is certain is that within a few years, no team will be able to do without a figure who trains the mind, regardless of the name “.
Do you think that the management’s choice to rely on a metal trainer is to give a sign of discontinuity with respect to the past?
“I believe the company has shown vision and challenge to the new needs of the team. He also had the great ability to make an in-depth analysis of the unsatisfactory results of the past season. In this sense, my figure also covers the need for a communication facilitator and problem solver within the various areas of the team, team, management, technical staff “.
The choice of management is also explained in the words of the President Fabio Bonifazi:
“The inclusion of the mental coach figure in the staff responds to a precise need within a structured organization – Bonifazi declared to Baseballmania – Often the mental coach is mistakenly confused with the motivator. In reality he is a very complex and interdisciplinary figure, who has the task of working with the team as much and as much as the “field” staff only that, instead of taking care of the athletic and technical aspect, he works on the psychological and mental aspects of the players which today are subject to thousands of stresses. The aim is to channel them within the team objectives so as to positively affect the performance of the athletes. In many disciplines it is a professionalism that has been cleared for years and is able to make a fundamental contribution to building the success of a Club. The intention is to take a first step to begin to approach the preparation of the team in a new way “.
So we look to the future by structuring a staff that represents a clear cut compared to the past:
“The future for us is already today. Neptune is a constantly evolving project. We are not trying to erase what has been, which remains very present in our history but we conceive it as a reference and not as an anchor to cling to. After all, when this adventure began three seasons ago, few would have believed in the possibility of building something different than in the past. We, in our small way, are trying with a policy of sustainability of budgets and enhancement of nurseries, two values that we have put at the center since day one “.
