Let’s face it that like confidence, self-control in coaching high school soccer is an option that players can choose. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. All of us know our mental state influences our passions that accordingly enhance our performance.
I’ll share with you a 12 step strategy to help players learn the ability and discipline of self-control. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance for 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: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. Allow them to investigate when, where and how loss of control happened on field in their past.
2. Understanding: Let the players find out and admit the reason that influenced their thoughts and resulted in them losing their emotional poise.
3. Differences: Give them time to recollect situations when they did lose control and when they did not. Have them decide the differences in their attitudes, behaviors, and emotions.
4. Problem: When coaching high school soccer, attempt to pinpoint the problem. For example: Is it the guilt of letting the whole team down because of their performance?
5. Belief: Help the players raise their own expectations including self-control as one of the character. Encourage them to change.
6. Reinforcement: A change in behavior is promoted by reinforcement. 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: Set up multiple performance based methods to boost the confidence level. For example: Course of action must be clear in the minds of players when a certain situation arises.
9. Plan: In football coaching, teach a planned and systematic way of chasing the goals to players.
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: Train the players to accept that setbacks are bound to happen from time to time. So, the better is to use these to learn new ways to tackle these.
12. Remembrance: Last but by no means the least, make the players understand that they are trying to change for a reason. They must understand the importance of what they are doing. What will their future be like, if they don’t change.
It is well known that a soccer player must act swiftly and yet comfortably to be perfect performer. In other words, the stress-free efficient performance.
You must not make any mistake about it. You must include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and train the players on how to control the thought process so that they can keep themselves stress-free.
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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.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching