Soccer Coaching Tips

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, it’s the relation between emotions and thoughts that concludes the self control strategies. It is a known fact that our emotional state influences our feelings and as a result of it, our performance is strengthened.

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. 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: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. Help your players evaluate the reasons how, where and when they lost control on the ground in their past.

2. Understanding: Help the players acknowledge the feeling that changed their thinking and caused them to lose their emotional steadiness.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Give them time to recollect situations when they did lose control and when they did not. 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: The players should manage to raise their expectations from them including self-control as one of the behaviors. Persuade them that they can change.

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: Set a series of small goals for players that will lead them along the road to change. 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 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: 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 must understand the importance of what they are doing. What would be there in future for them, if they don’t try?

For a soccer player to achieve a perfect performance state, the player must be trained for relaxed swiftness. It signifies the ability to use energy without any fear.

Make no mistake about it. Coaching high school soccer must include relaxation techniques so that the players can learn to be in-charge of their emotions to save energy and kill any fears.

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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.

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

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Yet, there are a number of issues that they are forced to handle. Most of these issues are a result of lack of communication. As a coach, you need to work upon certain communication related problems for effective execution of your responsibilities.

These are described for you one at a time.

Emotions of the coaches take over their minds while they are watching their kids play on field. Instead of acting as analytical observers, they become more of spectators. They fail to notice the important points that could better their team’s performance. 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. It’s important for the coach to know the game well but if he is unable to communicate his thoughts, the training gets repetitive.

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. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.

It may come as a surprise to you that coaches often forget that their training sessions are carried out by people. 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 that come from the coach are very important. 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!).

• Adopt a proactive approach to identify the impending problems and solve them.

• Strengthen the player’s self respect by matching criticism with praise. When it comes to coaching high school soccer, tilt the balance slightly more towards praise.

Believe my words. Your training programs will be immensely benefitted as a result of adopting these simple exercises.

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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.

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. 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 plays an influential and a key authority figure in the player’s career. The coach’s body language, mind-set, and expressions can shape, strengthen, or harm the player’s confidence.

In relation to coaching youth soccer, mental strength is about meeting the challenges with a positive attitude. Therefore, the coach must be the starting point in both practice and competition.

The coach can observe that closely controlled post-match schedule helps him or her in not getting either too low or too high. 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

In football coaching, the coach should aim at building a mentally tough team by demonstrating his or her ability to cope with emotional setbacks in spite of personal feelings.

Only when the coach shows a firm belief in the team’s capability to accomplish in spite of the problems, the team will have an outline for developing the same mind-set and feel motivated.

In coaching high school soccer, handling mistakes and failure is another important 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. Convince them to recommit themselves to the endeavor with renewed enthusiasm.

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.

To make players mentally strong, one way which can be adopted is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. During the course of soccer coaching, coaches can help by questioning and listening rather than always tell the players what they did wrong. 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. Rather than delivering a definition of the situation to the players, the coach can ask the player of his or her view point on the situation. 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.

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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.

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. 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 simply because success is the outcome of being confident of achieving it.

Like many choices we make, confidence as an attribute is also chosen by players. In coaching youth soccer, use the behaviors of two parrots perched on either shoulders to demonstrate this point.

One of them is the positive parrot, always urging the player to face up to the challenge saying “You can do it.” The second one is a negative parrot that is always cautioning the player “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.

Once the players have made up their minds, teach them to become liable for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. Develop successful players in your team by helping them build strong inner confidence by focusing on their contribution to success or failure.

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.
Automatically, the confidence for the next strike overshadows the distress of the miss.

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.

Such a judgment needs 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 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 grows up with 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.

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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.