When it comes to coaching high school soccer, of all the things that influence a player’s performance on field is the conduct and attitude of the coach. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.
The coach is an important and an influential authority figure in player’s lives. The body language, attitude, and expressions of the coach can shape, reinforce, or damage the players self esteem and confidence.
In relation to coaching youth soccer, mental strength is about meeting the challenges with a positive attitude. Therefore, the coach must be the starting point in both practice and competition.
The coach will find that a disciplined post-match routine is helpful in ensuring that he or she does not get either too high or too low. A successful coach will use ideas, stories, and metaphors, videos, and so on to shape the collective mindset of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in performance.
In football coaching, the coach must show the ability to deal handle emotional setbacks regardless of personal feelings in order to build a mentally strong team.
When the coach exhibits a strong belief in team’s capacity to achieve the goals notwithstanding the hindrances, the team will get an agenda for developing a similar attitude.
In coaching high school soccer, another critical area for which the coach is responsible is handling mistakes and failure. How strong the players feels motivated to correct the mistakes made is largely dependent upon the coach’s reaction to failure. A coach has got only two choices.
One of the choices can be employing the failure as a prospect to provide advice and guiding the players towards their improvement. Convince them to recommit themselves to the endeavor with renewed enthusiasm.
Making use of the failure as an evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that he cannot meet the expectations, can be the second choice. This poignant overreaction will de-motivate the players.
To make players mentally strong, one way which can be adopted is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. While soccer coaching, the coaches can help the players by questioning and listening them rather than always telling the players of their mistakes. They should be encouraged to talk about what they could have done better.
This exercise is known as self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. Rather than delivering a definition of the situation to the players, the coach can ask the player of his or her view point on the situation. For example; “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”
It is important for the players to think deeply and thoroughly and then account for their reactions which are very critical part of the learning process.
So go ahead and apply these methods in coaching high school soccer that you’ve just learnt.
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Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Kids Soccer Drills.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching