If you are like me, you probably know that in Coaching high school soccer, the journey to becoming a complete player begins by building confidence. When you declare that the players are under immense pressure, you as a coach are hinting to the fact that your players lack confidence to face a situation. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure 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.
Out of the two, one has a positive behavior and he keeps telling the player to face the challenges head on by saying “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 it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.
Once the players have made up their minds, teach them to become liable for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. Build confidence in the players by emphasizing their involvement in past successes and ready successful players to make a strong team.
Train the players of the fact that in soccer coaching that putting the blame on something or someone else is a mark of insecurity. Rather they should take responsibility and consider setbacks as a part of the learning curve, not a failure that could shake 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.
Accurate and quick judgments regarding a player’s caliber and talent is a key to manage a successful team. While football coaching, it is relatively easier to judge physical readiness than judging mental readiness.
To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. It is necessary to deeply go through the player’s spoken and unspoken messages about his or her knack to succeed in the game.
Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”
Confidence is built on experience. 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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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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 training fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Coaching high school soccer
