When it comes to coaching high school soccer, we must accept the fact that self-control is a choice just like confidence that players must make. Self-control strategies in soccer coaching depend upon the relationship between emotions and thoughts. It is a known fact that our emotional state influences our feelings and as a result of it, our performance is strengthened.
I’ll share with you a 12 step strategy to help players learn the ability and discipline of self-control. But make sure that your player’s only take these steps when they are sure of its value to them.
Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. These are the 12 steps for your information.
1. Awareness: Assist the players in finding out their weaknesses in coaching youth soccer. 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: Allow them to go back in time and recall situations where they did not lose control and where they did. Let them gauge the difference in their attitudes, emotions, and behavior.
4. Problem: Make an attempt to identify the exact problem in coaching high school soccer. For example: Is it the guilt of letting the whole team down because of their performance?
5. Belief: The players should be taught to raise their expectations for themselves with self-control as one of the traits. Give confidence to players to change themselves.
6. Reinforcement: A change in behavior is promoted by reinforcement. Being a coach, you need to appreciate the good changes in the players to ensure that these remain forever.
7. Goals: Start with multiple smaller goals, so that you can take your players along the path to changes. You need to make the players understand the link between actions, thoughts, and feelings.
8. Techniques: Build a series of behavioral techniques for maintaining confidence. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.
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. Help the players realize the value of ups and downs in the path to improvement.
11. Setbacks: Train the players to accept that setbacks are bound to happen from time to time. 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. They should always be clear about what are they doing and why. 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. This simply means use of full energy without stress.
Make no mistake about it. 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.
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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.