In coaching high school soccer, it’s a fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. Self-control strategies in soccer coaching depend upon the relationship between emotions and thoughts. 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. However, players should adopt this strategy only when they are certain of its utility for them.
Also, players must be ready to take full accountability for their actions. The 12 step strategy is explained in the following paragraphs.
1. Awareness: When coaching youth soccer, help players identify their weak points. Allow them to investigate when, where and how loss of control happened on field in their past.
2. Understanding: Help the players acknowledge the feeling that changed their thinking and caused them to lose their emotional steadiness.
3. Differences: Let the players recall situations in the past when they did and did not lost control. And then they should determine the difference in their emotions, attitudes, and behavior.
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: The players should manage to raise their expectations from them including self-control as one of the behaviors. Support them so they can change.
6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement encourages a change in behavior. 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: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. Assist the players in identifying the relationship between opinions, outlook, and actions.
8. Techniques: To maintain the confidence level, employ a set of behavioral practices. For example: Course of action must be clear in the minds of players when a certain situation arises.
9. Plan: In football coaching, train the players to systematically and considerably follow their goals.
10. Progress: Teach them how to be patent. Help the players realize the value of ups and downs in the path to improvement.
11. Setbacks: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. Thus, utilize these to learn new things for improvement.
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. 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. This simply means use of full energy without stress.
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.
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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.