Coaching High School Soccer: Secrets Revealed
In coaching high school soccer, the first and the foremost quality that the players need to have or develop is confidence if they wish to become complete players. As a coach, when you declare that your players are under pressure, you are really identifying in them a lack of confidence to deal with a situation. I say this because only confident players expect to win and get successful.
Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. In the course of coaching youth soccer, this point can be made clear to them by describing the behavior of two parrots that sit on either shoulder.
One is a positive parrot that pushes the player to accept and conquer every challenge coming his way by repeating “You can do it.” The other parrot has the tendency to de-motivate the players saying “You can’t do this.” That’s why it the player who has to make a choice between which parrot to follow.
Once the choice has been made, teach them to take responsibility for their actions. This decision could also be an everyday task. Develop successful players in your team by helping them build strong inner confidence by focusing on their contribution to success or failure.
In soccer coaching, players should be made to know that blaming someone or something is a signal of insecurity. Rather they should take responsibility and consider setbacks as a part of the learning curve, not a failure that could shake confidence.
Likewise in coaching high school soccer, it’s imperative to teach the players to repeat the phrase “I’ll get the next one” whenever they miss out on any opportunity.
The distress of the miss instantly motivates, hence ensuring no effect on confidence for the next strike.
In a team, caliber, mental strength and judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition, hold the key for its success. Judging physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.
To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. The spoken and unspoken messages of the player should be taken into account to ensure his or her ability to succeed in the game.
Confidence is the fruit of success. Self-belief, hard work done and the mental preparation to face tough situations, hold the key to success in soccer. “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail” is a phrase often used to motivate players.
Experience is essential to build confidence. To build a strong base of the much needed experience, the players must be trained to cope up with their mistakes, defeats and criticism and fears, calmly. It is the feeling that he or she has the knowledge, has been there before, and knows what to look forward to.
Don’t take it for granted. Building of confidence in coaching high school soccer is an everyday task, so players should reflect on certain key steps to discover what works for them.
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Coaching High School Soccer: Self-control Secrets Revealed
In coaching high school soccer, it’s a fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. All of us know our mental state influences our passions that accordingly enhance our performance.
You can aid your players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control with the 12 step strategy that I’m going to share with you. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance for them.
Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. The 12 steps are explained below.
1. Awareness: Assist the players in finding out their weaknesses in coaching youth soccer. Let them examine when, where, and why loss of control has occurred previously on field.
2. Understanding: Let the players find out and admit the reason that influenced their thoughts and resulted in them losing their emotional poise.
3. Differences: Give them time to recollect situations when they did lose control and when they did not. Have them decide the differences in their attitudes, behaviors, and emotions.
4. Problem: When coaching high school soccer, attempt to pinpoint the problem. For example: The player may be feeling guilty that he let the entire team down due to his actions.
5. Belief: The players should be taught to raise their expectations for themselves with self-control as one of the traits. Give confidence to players to change themselves.
6. Reinforcement: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. Therefore, you must not forget your duty as a coach to recognize and honor the improvements of players so that they stick to these.
7. Goals: Start with multiple smaller goals, so that you can take your players along the path to changes. Guide the players in understanding the correlation between way of thinking, thought process, and actions.
8. Techniques: Put together different behavioral action items to uphold the confidence level. For example: If a certain situation happens, this is the course that players must follow.
9. Plan: In football coaching, help the players in learning an organized and efficient way to pursue their goals.
10. Progress: Tell them to learn the skill of patience. Let them know that improvement always comes in a series of ups and downs.
11. Setbacks: Teach the players on how to live with the setbacks that are unavoidable. So, the best way is learn from them and become even stronger.
12. Remembrance: Finally another important point is making the players understand the importance of the reason for they are trying to change. They should always be clear about what are they doing and why. What would the change mean to them for their future?
For a soccer player to achieve a perfect performance state, the player must be trained for relaxed swiftness. This simply means use of full energy without stress.
This is of utmost importance. To teach the players in channelizing their energy in way that they are able to produce emotions to help them get rid of tension, include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer.
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Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Practice Drills.