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. This is because it is only with confidence that we expect success.
Confidence is a choice and your players have to first choose to become confident. In coaching youth soccer, use the behaviors of two parrots perched on either shoulders to demonstrate this point.
One of them is the positive parrot, always urging the player to face up to the challenge saying “You can do it.” The other is the negative parrot, constantly warning the player “You can’t do this.” And clearly they have to choose which parrot to listen to.
Also teach them to take full responsibility of the consequences that follow their choice. This decision could also be an everyday task. Prepare a team of successful players full of confidence by directing their attention, energy, and enthusiasm in practice towards their role in past success.
In soccer coaching, players should be made to know that blaming someone or something is a signal of insecurity. Rather teach players to take the setbacks as an integral part of the learning curve and not something to deter their confidence levels.
Also, in coaching high school soccer, the players should learn by heart the phrase “I’ll get the next one” to keep them going whenever they lose any opportunity.
Automatically, the confidence for the next strike overshadows the distress of the miss.
A team is said to be successful if you have the ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive in competition. Judging mental readiness is often a bit tougher challenge than judging physical readiness in football coaching.
Such a judgment needs 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 comes from success. And success in soccer is more likely when you know you have done everything you could to get ready for situations that might build pressure. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”
Confidence grows up with experience. Players must be conditioned to take in their stride all fears, mistakes, defeats, and criticism to build the foundation of experience they need. The feeling of he or she having the knowledge, a little more know – how due to experience and thus, the thought process of planning the next step, prevails.
Make no mistake about it. In coaching high school soccer, constructing confidence is a daily task and hence, players should intimate on the key steps to find out their positives.
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Andre Botelho is known online as “The Expert Youth Soccer Coach” and his free ebooks and reports have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Learn how to skyrocket your players’ skills and make practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Coaching.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching