I don’t know a thing about you, but I’ll bet that the attitude and behavior of the coach in coaching high school soccer strongly influences the performance of the players. In order to have a team that is mentally strong, the coaches should plan a course that strengthens a positive winning mind-set.
In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. The coach’s body language, mind-set, and expressions can shape, strengthen, or harm the player’s confidence.
When coaching youth soccer, mental strength is required to meet the challenges through a positive willpower. Thus, in both practice and competition, the coach should be the starting point.
In order to make sure that the coach does not get either too high or too low, he or she should pursue a disciplined post match routine. 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 who wants a mentally tough team must demonstrate a controlled way to deal with emotional setbacks despite personal feelings.
Only when the coach shows a firm belief in the team’s capability to accomplish in spite of the problems, the team will have an outline for developing the same mind-set and feel motivated.
In coaching high school soccer, handling mistakes and failure is another important area of responsibility for the coach. One of the keys to a player’s motivation and the wish to work towards correcting mistakes is the coach’s response to failure. A coach has got only two choices.
To give a response to the players in order to improve them, their failures can be used as an opportunity to correct them. The players should be persuaded to recommit themselves to the challenge with improved inspiration.
Second, use failure as evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that they cannot meet expectations. Such a heartbreaking overreaction might de-motivate the players.
Players can be made psychologically strong by accommodating the accountability for their judgment, stances, and actions and rejecting all probable excuses. During the course of soccer coaching, coaches can help by questioning and listening rather than always tell the players what they did wrong. They should be encouraged to talk about what they could have done better.
Such an exercise is called self-reference. The coach can encourage the players by encouraging the players to self reference. The coach can discuss the situation by asking the players their reaction rather than giving them a definition of the situation. In order to explain, we can take the instance “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”
This way the players must think through and account for his or her reactions which are a vital part of the learning process.
Hence, apply these methods in coaching high school soccer.
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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