Coaching High School Soccer: Learn To Achieve Mental Toughness
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
Speaking of coaching high school soccer, the outlook and behavior of the coach are the most important influences affecting a player’s performance. In order to have a team that is mentally strong, the coaches should plan a course that strengthens a positive winning mind-set.
The coach is an important and an influential authority figure in player’s lives. The coach’s body language, mind-set, and expressions can shape, strengthen, or harm the player’s 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 can observe that closely controlled post-match schedule helps him or her in not getting either too low or too high. A successful coach will exploit ideas, anecdotes, and images, videos, and all that to shape the collective attitude of the team and train them to be mentally tough in practice.
In football coaching, the coach should aim at building a mentally tough team by demonstrating his or her ability to cope with emotional setbacks in spite of personal feelings.
As a result of the coach’s total belief in the ability of the team to reach their goals regardless of the barriers, the team gets a structure to build a mind-set on the same lines.
Dealing with mistakes and failure is another area in coaching high school soccer, for which the coach is solely responsible. The coach’s reaction to failure is the key to player’s motivation and desire to work hard to correct mistakes. A coach has got only two choices.
Utilizing failures as an opportunity to give feedback to the players and guiding them towards their improvement can be opted as the first choice. The players should be persuaded to recommit themselves to the challenge with improved inspiration.
The failure can be used as substantiation of the player’s insufficiency and evidence that he cannot meet the prospects. This emotional overreaction will de-motivate the players.
One way that players become mentally tough is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. In soccer coaching, players can be questioned and listened by the coaches rather than always being accused of their mistakes. The players can be motivated by having a one-to-one conversation with them and discussing with them about what they could have done better.
This can be referred to as self-reference. The coach can encourage the players by encouraging the players to self reference. Rather than delivering a definition of the situation to the players, the coach can ask the player of his or her view point on 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?”
It is important for the players to think deeply and thoroughly and then account for their reactions which are very critical 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.