When it comes to coaching high school soccer, the first step towards success is the confidence building amongst players who have the potential to become brilliant players. Often when you say that the players have to play under pressure in a game, it indicates your player’s lack of confidence to handle any situation. This is simply because success is the outcome of being confident of achieving it.
Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. When coaching youth soccer, illustrate this point by telling them the behaviors of two parrots sitting 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.” Then there is the other parrot who is full of negativity and keeps telling the player “You can’t do this.” And clearly they have to choose which parrot to listen to.
Once the choice has been made, teach them to take responsibility for their actions. And this may be an everyday decision. 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. In fact they should be taught to see setbacks as a part of the learning curve and not let it shake their confidence.
Similarly in coaching high school soccer, the most important self-conversation for any player missing an opportunity to score is the phrase “I’ll get the next one.”
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.
One of the keys to managing a successful team is your ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition. In football coaching, there is always a close call between judging physical and mental readiness, but in the end, physical readiness wins the battle.
Understandable and apparent messages are required to make such judgments possible. The spoken and unspoken messages of the player should be taken into account to ensure his or her ability to succeed in the game.
Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. Self-belief, hard work done and the mental preparation to face tough situations, hold the key to success in soccer. In order to make the players emotionally power-packed, a phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is frequently used.
Experience is essential to build confidence. The reservations, mistakes, losses and denunciation should be taken up calmly by the players so that their underpinning of experience can be built. 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.
Know this. While coaching high school soccer, building confidence is worked out on an everyday basis so, the players should echo upon the certain key steps to determine what works for them.
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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