Coaching High School Soccer

Like any other sport, in coaching high school soccer too, confidence is the prerequisite that each players need to discover and instill in him or herself to get successful. 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 simply because success is the outcome of being confident of achieving it.

The players must promise themselves and accept confidence as an attribute to develop. Explain this point in coaching youth soccer by telling them the conduct to two parrots sitting on both shoulders.

One parrot is a positive parrot that constantly motivates the players to take every challenge that comes in his way by saying “You can do it.” The other parrot has the tendency to de-motivate the players saying “You can’t do this.” And clearly they have to choose which parrot to listen to.

After they’ve made a choice, train them to take the accountability for their acts. This decision could also be an everyday task. Develop brilliant players in your team by constantly reminding them of their participation in past successes to boost their confidence levels.

Coaching Youth Soccer

Train the players of the fact that in soccer coaching that putting the blame on something or someone else is a mark of insecurity. In fact they should be taught to see setbacks as a part of the learning curve and not let it shake their confidence.

Likewise in coaching high school soccer, it’s imperative to teach the players to repeat the phrase “I’ll get the next one” whenever they miss out on any opportunity.
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.

A team is said to be successful if you have the ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive in competition. While football coaching, it is relatively easier to judge physical readiness than judging mental readiness.

To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. Look for both verbal and non verbal messages that the player is sure of his or her ability to succeed in the game.

Confidence comes from success. When you are completely satisfied with your work that you have done and when you are ready to face a pressure – cooker scenario which is anytime possible, you achieve success in soccer. 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.

Experience is essential to build confidence. Players must be conditioned to take in their stride all fears, mistakes, defeats, and criticism to build the foundation of experience they need. The feeling that he or she has the knowledge has some experience and knows how to handle the situations, always prevails.

Never doubt it. Building of confidence in coaching high school soccer is an everyday task, so players should reflect on certain key steps to discover what works for them.

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When coaching high school soccer, it is the behavior and approach of the coach that has a major impact on the performance of the players. 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. It’s the body language, outlook, and expressions of the coach that can outline, add force to, or damage the players self esteem.

When coaching youth soccer, mental strength is required to meet the challenges through a positive willpower. For this reason, in practice as well as in competition, the starting point should be the coach.

After the match, the coach should follow a disciplined routine to help him or her staying away from getting too high or too low. 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.

Coaching Youth Soccer

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.

When the coach exhibits a strong belief in team’s capacity to achieve the goals notwithstanding the hindrances, the team will get an agenda for developing a similar attitude.

Coping with failures and mistakes in coaching high school soccer is another 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.

Making use of the failure as an evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that he cannot meet the expectations, can be the second choice. Players will get de-motivated because of this emotional overreaction.

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.

This can be referred to as self-reference. Players can be encouraged to practice self reference by the coach for their improvement. 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. For example; “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”

In this way, players must think through and account for his or her view points which are an important part of the learning process.

Hence, apply these methods in coaching high school soccer.

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When it comes to coaching high school soccer, communication is the most vital part to consider on way to achieve success. Coaching is an art of communication. It lets you speak to mind in the simplest way and allow the other to do the activity in exactly the same way.

Speaking of soccer coaching, almost all the coaches are the former players who decide to take on as coaches. Still, there are several problems that they have to find solutions to. These issues come up due to the inability to communicate properly. Your role as a coach would become far easier if you just pay attention to some most important communication issues.

These have been described one by one.

When coaches watch their kids playing, they tend to become emotional. They forget that they have the duty to observe the players analytically rather than merely watching them play. They ignore the important facets of the game that could improve the team’s performance significantly. As such they lose the focus on directing the team towards a win by way of an effective conversation.

The coaches are generally not trained to communicate effectively although they have all the knowledge of the game. For example; use of flip charts and videos in soccer coaching is not applied by many coaches as they aren’t aware of them. The coach may be technically talented but if he not able to communicate properly, regular practice sessions get really boring for the kids.

Coaching Youth Soccer

This is especially important in coaching high school soccer since the players have been into the sport for quite some time. They have been executing soccer drills for a long time at different levels. You can do away with the monotony of repetitive messages by frequently changing the layout of training.

It may come as a surprise to you that coaches often forget that their training sessions are carried out by people. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. For example; Sending out instructions without taking the player’s name leads to uncertainty and confusion.

In football coaching, there are some points that need special attention and they are as follows:

• Every message coming from the coach carries equal importance. So make sure that they are interpreted correctly.

• Convey your messages in a positive language to encourage players to play their best game. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.

• Spend equal time with all players. Research in this filed shows that coaches tend to spend comparatively more time with the best players (up to seven times more!).

• Don’t wait for the problems to arise to sort them out.

• Add force to the player’s confidence by harmonizing criticism with praise. When it comes to coaching high school soccer, tilt the balance slightly more towards praise.

Believe me. Once you start to apply this in your training programs, the benefits will far exceed your expectations.

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In coaching high school soccer it’s a proven fact that self-control is a choice and players have to choose it just like they do for confidence. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. It is a known fact that our emotional state influences our feelings and as a result of it, our performance is strengthened.

I’ll explain to you a 12 step strategy that’ll allow you to assist your players in learning the discipline of self-control. Still, it is better that players take up these steps only when they feel that it is going to be of value to them.

What’s more, the players should also be prepared to take full responsibility for the actions they take. The 12 steps are explained below.

1. Awareness: When coaching youth soccer, help players identify their weak points. Have them analyze where, when, and how they lost control on field during the past.

2. Understanding: Let the players find out and admit the reason that influenced their thoughts and resulted in them losing their emotional poise.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Let them recall various situations when they managed to maintain control and when he did lose control. Let them judge the distinction between their behavior, attitudes, and emotions then.

4. Problem: In coaching high school soccer, try to find out the exact problem. For example: The player may be feeling guilty that he let the entire team down due to his actions.

5. Belief: Teach the players to raise their expectations for their own selves with self-control as one of the qualities. Persuade them that they can change.

6. Reinforcement: A change in behavior is promoted by reinforcement. Therefore, you must not forget your duty as a coach to recognize and honor the improvements of players so that they stick to these.

7. Goals: Set a series of small goals for players that will lead them along the road to change. Help the players understand the connection between thoughts, feelings, and actions.

8. Techniques: To maintain the confidence level, employ a set of behavioral practices. For example: When a particular situation comes up, this is the path that the players must go by.

9. Plan: In football coaching, help the players in learning an organized and efficient way to pursue their goals.

10. Progress: Tell them to be patient. Let them understand the principle of gradual improvement including the ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. So, the best way is learn from them and become even stronger.

12. Remembrance: Last but an important point is to let the players identify the good reason behind the change. The players must always know that why and what are they doing. How important the change is for their future?

For a soccer player to achieve a perfect performance state, the player must be trained for relaxed swiftness. It means possessing energy without tension.

You must not make any mistake about it. Including relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and help players control their thinking so they can generate emotions that remove unnecessary tension and save energy.

Subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that has lots of relevant information in form of articles, newsletters, and videos to help you become a better coach and your player’s champions.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Practice Drills.