Soccer Practice

In coaching high school soccer, it’s a fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. We all know that our state of mind influences our emotions, which in turn strengthens our performance.

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. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance 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: Let the players find out and admit the reason that influenced their thoughts and resulted in them losing their emotional poise.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Let the players recall situations in the past when they did and did not lost control. 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: 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: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. 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. You need to make the players understand the link between actions, thoughts, and feelings.

8. Techniques: Put together different behavioral action items to uphold the confidence level. For example: If a certain situation happens, this is the course that players must follow.

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: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. 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 be clear about what are they doing and why. How important the change is for their future?

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.

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, of all the things that influence a player’s performance on field is the conduct and attitude of the coach. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.

The coach is an important and an influential authority figure in player’s lives. 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.

With respect to coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is all about meeting challenges with a positive outlook. 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. A successful coach will use ideas, stories, and metaphors, videos, and so on to shape the collective mindset of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in performance.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach must show the ability to deal handle emotional setbacks regardless of personal feelings in order to build a mentally strong team.

When the coach exhibits a strong belief in team’s capacity to achieve the goals notwithstanding the hindrances, the team will get an agenda for developing a similar attitude.

In coaching high school soccer, another critical area for which the coach is responsible is handling mistakes and failure. 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.

One is to use failure as an opportunity to give the players feedback on how to improve. Convince them to recommit themselves to the endeavor with renewed enthusiasm.

The failure can be used as substantiation of the player’s insufficiency and evidence that he cannot meet the prospects. This emotional overreaction will de-motivate the players.

Players can be made psychologically strong by accommodating the accountability for their judgment, stances, and actions and rejecting all probable excuses. In soccer coaching, players can be questioned and listened by the coaches rather than always being accused of their mistakes. By discussing about their better performance which they could’ve delivered, the players can be encouraged.

We call it self-reference. The coach can take part in this by always encouraging the players to self reference. 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.

Hence, apply these methods 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, the first and the foremost quality that the players need to have or develop is confidence if they wish to become complete players. 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 because it is only with confidence that we expect success.

Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. In the course of coaching youth soccer, this point can be made clear to them by describing the behavior of two parrots that sit on either shoulder.

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 clearly they have to choose which parrot to listen to.

Also teach them to take full responsibility of the consequences that follow their choice. This decision could also be an everyday task. Prepare a team of successful players full of confidence by directing their attention, energy, and enthusiasm in practice towards their role in past success.

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.

Similarly in coaching high school soccer, the most important self-conversation for any player missing an opportunity to score is the phrase “I’ll get the next one.”
Automatically, the confidence for the next strike overshadows the distress of the miss.

Accurate and quick judgments regarding a player’s caliber and talent is a key to manage a successful team. Judging physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.

To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. It is necessary to deeply go through the player’s spoken and unspoken messages about his or her knack to succeed in the game.

Success gives rise to confidence. Self-belief, hard work done and the mental preparation to face tough situations, hold the key to success in soccer. “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail” is a phrase often used to motivate 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.

Never doubt it. 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.

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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.

I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in coaching high school soccer. Coaching is an art of communication. It explains what you want of people in such a way that allows them to perform it.

Majority of coaches in soccer coaching are the players who used to play the game in their younger days. Then also they have to face a number of issues while coaching young players. 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 have been described one by one.

In the course of watching the young players on field, coaches often get emotional. They forget that they have the duty to observe the players analytically rather than merely watching them play. As such they are not able to see the key points that could make all the difference in 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; in soccer coaching, many coaches are not aware of the utility of a flip chart or a video. 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 occupies greater importance in coaching high school soccer as the players are young but also know the various facets of the game. They have been performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. You can do away with the monotony of repetitive messages by frequently changing the layout of training.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. The objective of training is lost because the coaches get so much occupied in just conducting the sessions well. For instance; the communication is incomplete when an instruction is given to a player but without his/ her name thus making it difficult for any of them to apply it.

Some guidelines meant for coaches in football coaching include the following:

• 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. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.

• 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.

• Communicate the potential issues that could arise and have a solution ready.

• Add force to the player’s confidence by harmonizing 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.

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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.