Coaching High School Soccer: 5 Sure-fire Tips To Increase Confidence
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. 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.
Like many choices we make, confidence as an attribute is also chosen by players. When coaching youth soccer, illustrate this point by telling them the behaviors of two parrots sitting on either shoulder.
One of them is the positive parrot, always urging the player to face up to the challenge 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 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 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.
Teach your players during soccer coaching that holding someone or something else responsible is a symbol 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.
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. Judging mental readiness is often a bit tougher challenge than judging physical readiness in football coaching.
To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. To check player’s capability to thrive in the game, it is necessary to browse their verbal and non verbal messages.
Success gives rise to confidence. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. The phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is used over and over again to trigger off the players.
Confidence is built on experience. To build a strong base of the much needed experience, the players must be trained to cope up with their mistakes, defeats and criticism and fears, calmly. 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.
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