Speaking of coaching high school soccer, the outlook and behavior of the coach are the most important influences affecting a player’s performance. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.
The coach plays an influential and a key authority figure in the player’s career. 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. So, it is the coach who should be the starting point in practice and competition both.
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 competent coach will draw on ideas, narrative, and symbols, videos, and like that to shape the collective outlook of the team and ready them to be mentally strong on the playing field.
A coach should display control in football coaching, when dealing with emotional setbacks notwithstanding personal feelings, with a view to create a mentally strong team.
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. There are two choices available to the coach.
To give a response to the players in order to improve them, their failures can be used as an opportunity to correct them. Persuade them to recommit themselves to the effort with renewed motivation.
The player’s dearth and attestation that he cannot meet the expectations can be used as an evidence of failure. Players will get de-motivated because of this emotional overreaction.
One way that players become mentally tough is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. During the course of soccer coaching, coaches can help by questioning and listening rather than always tell the players what they did wrong. The players should be encouraged to talk about their better performance which they could deliver.
Such an exercise is called self-reference. The coach can encourage the players by encouraging the players to self reference. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. 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