Soccer Drills

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. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.

The coach plays an influential and a key authority figure in the player’s career. The body language, experiences, and attitude of the coach are key attributes that can shape, reinforce, or damage the player’s sense of worth and confidence.

When coaching youth soccer, mental strength is required to meet the challenges through a positive willpower. So, it is the coach who should be the starting point in practice and competition both.

The coach will find that a disciplined post-match routine is helpful in ensuring that he or she does not get either 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

In football coaching, the coach who wants a mentally tough team must demonstrate a controlled way to deal with emotional setbacks despite personal feelings.

As a result of the coach’s total belief in the ability of the team to reach their goals regardless of the barriers, the team gets a structure to build a mind-set on the same lines.

Dealing with mistakes and failure is another area in coaching high school soccer, for which the coach is solely responsible. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the mistakes. There are two choices available to the coach.

Utilizing failures as an opportunity to give feedback to the players and guiding them towards their improvement can be opted as the first choice. 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. Players will get de-motivated because of this emotional overreaction.

By making the players to accept the responsibility for their judgments, outlooks, and dealings and rejecting all possible excuses, players can be made mentally tough. 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 can be motivated by having a one-to-one conversation with them and discussing with them about what they could have done better.

Such an exercise is called self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. 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.

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, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. It is a known fact that our emotional state influences our feelings and as a result of it, our performance is strengthened.

You can aid your players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control with the 12 step strategy that I’m going to share with you. Still, it is better that players take up these steps only when they feel that it is going to be of value to them.

The players should be ready to accept full responsibility for their acts as well. These are the 12 steps for your information.

1. Awareness: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. Let them examine when, where, and why loss of control has occurred previously on field.

2. Understanding: Allow the players to make out the reason that affected their thinking in such a way that they lost their emotional stability.

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. And then they should determine the difference in their emotions, attitudes, and behavior.

4. Problem: In coaching high school soccer, try to find out the exact problem. For instance: It may be the guilty feeling in a player that he let the whole team down due to his acts.

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: A change in behavior is promoted by reinforcement. To make the improved skills of players as their permanent skills, you, being a coach, must reward them.

7. Goals: Set a series of small goals for players that will lead them along the road to change. Assist the players in identifying the relationship between opinions, outlook, and actions.

8. Techniques: Set up multiple performance based methods to boost the confidence level. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.

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. Therefore, try to learn something new from every setback.

12. Remembrance: Last but by no means the least, make the players understand that they are trying to change for a reason. They should always bear in mind why they’re doing this. What would be there in future for them, if they don’t try?

We all agree that a perfect performance state for a soccer player is that of a relaxed promptness. It signifies the ability to use energy without any fear.

This is of utmost importance. 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.

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.

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

Majority of coaches in soccer coaching are the players who used to play the game in their younger days. Still, there are several problems that they have to find solutions to. Majority of these issues come up due to communication lags. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.

These are described for you one at a time.

Coaches generally allow their emotions to become involved while watching their kids play. The coaches become spectators instead of adopting a critical approach to observing the kids. They tend to overlook some chief points that could help the team improve on certain fronts. Here, they miss out on the important part of having a professional conversation aimed at getting a win.

The coaches are generally not trained to communicate effectively although they have all the knowledge of the game. For instance; most coaches don’t use videos or flip charts in soccer coaching because they don’t know about 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 executing soccer drills for a long time at different levels. By keep on changing training format, coaches can avoid the monotony of repeating the same messages again and again.

It may come as a surprise to you that coaches often forget that their training sessions are carried out by people. Only with a view to execute the training program well, coaches tend to ignore every other aspect of it. When a coach tries to instruct something to the play but does not use that player’s name, it creates confusion and is an apt example of bad communication.

There are certain guiding principles in football coaching which 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.

• Pay equal attention to each player in the team. Research indicates that coaches spend a lot more time (up to seven times more!) with star players.

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

• Strengthen the player’s self respect by matching criticism with praise. Tip the balance more towards praise with players in coaching high school  soccer.

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

There’s lot more to know and understand about this aspect of soccer only if you wish to. Just subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community, and get access to the most important and informative topics concerning the game.

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.

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. As a coach, when you declare that your players are under pressure, you are really identifying in them a lack of confidence to deal with a situation. This is simply because success is the outcome of being confident of achieving it.

Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. Explain this point in coaching youth soccer by telling them the conduct to two parrots sitting on both shoulders.

Out of the two, one has a positive behavior and he keeps telling the player to face the challenges head on by saying “You can do it.” The other is the negative parrot, constantly warning the player “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.

Once the choice has been made, teach them to take responsibility for their actions. The players may have to make this decision on a daily basis. Build confidence in the players by emphasizing their involvement in past successes and ready successful players to make a strong team.

Coaching Youth Soccer

Teach your players during soccer coaching that holding someone or something else responsible is a symbol 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.

When coaching high school soccer, condition the players to see every lost opportunity as a lesson and they should keep telling themselves “I’ll get the next one.”
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. While football coaching, it is relatively easier to judge physical readiness than judging mental readiness.

Understandable and apparent messages are required to make such judgments possible. Look for both verbal and non verbal messages that the player is sure of his or her ability to succeed in the game.

Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”

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. In coaching high school soccer, constructing confidence is a daily task and hence, players should intimate on the key steps to find out their positives.

There is lot more for you to discover and for that subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that as tons of articles, videos, and newsletters that keep you updated with the latest and the best on soccer.

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.