Coaching Soccer Drills

You might disagree, but hear me out on this when I say that in coaching high school soccer, communication is the first step to success. The actual meaning of coaching kids is the art of communicating with them. It explains what you want of people in such a way that allows them to perform it.

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Even then they have to deal with many issues in coaching young players. Most of these issues are a result of lack of communication. Your role as a coach would become far easier if you just pay attention to some most important communication issues.

These are described for you one at a time.

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 tend to overlook some chief points that could help the team improve on certain fronts. 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

It is even more important in case of coaching high school soccer because the players are not new to the game. They have been working on these drills for some time but the standards are different. And one of the ways to avoid the boredom of repeating important messages is to keep varying the format.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. They get so absorbed in the training and coaching as a process that they lose their ground. 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:

• All messages from the coach are important for players. So ensure that they are understood completely and correctly.

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Let them become better players with every passing day rather than pointing out their weaknesses.

• Make sure you spend quality time with all your players. It has come to light through various studies that coaches spend much more time with their top players (up to seven times more!).

• Be proactive in communicating the problem the moment you see it coming.

• Accentuate your player’s self worth by balancing praise with criticism. Tilt the balance a little more towards praise with respect to coaching high school soccer.

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

You have a lot more information coming your way if this is what really inspires you. You can subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community which has tons to videos, and articles to improve your team’s overall performance.

Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Coaching high school soccer.

Let’s face it that like confidence, self-control in coaching high school soccer is an option that players can choose. In soccer coaching, it’s the relation between emotions and thoughts that concludes the self control strategies. We all know that our state of mind influences our emotions, which in turn strengthens our performance.

With a view to help the players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control, there is a 12 step strategy which I shall discuss with you. But make sure that your player’s only take these steps when they are sure of its value to them.

Also, players must be ready to take full accountability for their actions. The 12 steps are explained below.

1. Awareness: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying 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: Allow them to go back in time and recall situations where they did not lose control and where they did. 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. Encourage them to change.

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement encourages a change in behavior. So, as a coach, you must reward improved behavior of players on their way to permanent change.

7. Goals: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. Guide the players in understanding the correlation between way of thinking, thought process, 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, teach the players to pursue their goals in a planned and systematic way.

10. Progress: Tell them to learn the skill of patience. Let them know that improvement always comes in a series of ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Let the players understand that setbacks are there to stay. So, the better is to use these to learn new ways to tackle these.

12. Remembrance: Finally another important point is making the players understand the importance of the reason for they are trying to change. They should always bear in mind why they’re doing this. What would the change mean to them for their future?

It is well known that a soccer player must act swiftly and yet comfortably to be perfect performer. It means possessing energy without tension.

This should not be taken lightly. To teach the players in channelizing their energy in way that they are able to produce emotions to help them get rid of tension, include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer.

There is lots of good information available in the form of articles, newsletters, and videos on youth soccer coaching community to help you learn new coaching techniques; hurry subscriptions are open.

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.

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. When you declare that the players are under immense pressure, you as a coach are hinting to the fact that your players lack confidence to face 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.” The other parrot has the tendency to de-motivate the players saying “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.

After they’ve made a choice, train them to take the accountability for their acts. This decision could also be an everyday task. Build confidence in the players by emphasizing their involvement in past successes and ready successful players to make a strong team.

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.

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. In football coaching, there is always a close call between judging physical and mental readiness, but in the end, physical readiness wins the battle.

To facilitate this type of judgment, look for clear messages. It is necessary to deeply go through the player’s spoken and unspoken messages about his or her knack to succeed in the game.

Confidence is the fruit of 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.

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. It is the feeling that he or she has the knowledge, has been there before, and knows what to look forward to.

Know this. Building of confidence is an everyday task in coaching high school soccer, so players ought to reflect on positive and main steps for their realization.

To know the latest and the best on soccer, it is preferable to subscribe our youth soccer coaching community as it has bundles of information in the newsletters, articles and the videos.

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.

I don’t know a thing about you, but I’ll bet that the attitude and behavior of the coach in coaching high school soccer strongly influences the performance of the players. 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.

In coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is about meeting challenges with positive self control. Therefore, the coach must be the starting point in both practice and competition.

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

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.

Dealing with mistakes and failure is another area in coaching high school soccer, for which the coach is solely responsible. 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.

Second, use failure as evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that they cannot meet expectations. Such a heartbreaking overreaction might 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 should be encouraged to talk about their better performance which they could deliver.

This can be referred to as self-reference. Players can be encouraged to practice self reference by the coach for their improvement. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. Take an example: “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.

Whatever methods that you’ve just learnt, go ahead and start applying in coaching high school soccer.

The information in the form of videos, relevant articles and newsletters, that are posted on our youth soccer coaching community can help you in brushing yourself as a good coach, hence, subscribing it is advisable.

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.