Coaching High School Soccer: A Guide To Mental Toughness
When it comes to Coaching high school soccer, of all the things that influence a player’s performance on field is the conduct and attitude of the coach. A coach should prepare a course that stresses the development of a positive winning attitude with a view to have a mentally tough team.
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.
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.
The coach can observe that closely controlled post-match schedule helps him or her in not getting either too low or too high. An experienced coach will apply ideas, chronicle, and descriptions, videos, etc to shape the collective approach of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in their game.
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.
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.
In coaching high school soccer, handling mistakes and failure is another important area of responsibility for the coach. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the mistakes. The coach has 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. Players will get de-motivated because of this emotional overreaction.
By making the players to accept the responsibility for their judgments, outlooks, and dealings and rejecting all possible excuses, players can be made mentally tough. While soccer coaching, the coaches can help the players by questioning and listening them rather than always telling the players 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.
Such an exercise is called self-reference. The coach can take part in this by always encouraging the players to self reference. Asking the players of their reaction for the situation is a better option for a coach than giving his own view points or definition on it. “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?” can be taken as references.
The players should think all the way through and account for his or her version of reactions which are a fundamental part of the learning process.
So go ahead and apply these methods in coaching high school soccer that you’ve just learnt.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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 training fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Drills
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