Soccer Practice Games

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, the connection between emotions and thoughts establishes the self-control strategies. We all know that our state of mind influences our emotions, which in turn strengthens our performance.

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. But make sure that your player’s only take these steps when they are sure of its value to them.

What’s more, the players should also be prepared to take full responsibility for the actions they take. 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. Have them analyze where, when, and how they lost control on field during the 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: 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: A players may be feeling responsible of letting the entire team down because of his actions.

5. Belief: Teach the players to raise their expectations for their own selves with self-control as one of the qualities. Persuade them that 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: Start with multiple smaller goals, so that you can take your players along the path to changes. Assist the players in identifying the relationship between opinions, outlook, and actions.

8. Techniques: Put together different behavioral action items to uphold the confidence level. 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: Help them being patient. Let the players understand that the ups and downs are integral parts of path to improvement.

11. Setbacks: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. 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?

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.

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. You tend to spot the player’s weakness in terms of less confidence to cope with a situation whenever you use the term “pressure” in the game. This is because it is only with confidence that we expect success.

Like many choices we make, confidence as an attribute is also chosen by players. When coaching youth soccer, illustrate this point by telling them the behaviors of two parrots sitting on either shoulder.

One parrot is a positive parrot that constantly motivates the players to take every challenge that comes in his way by 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.

After they’ve made a choice, train them to take the accountability for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. 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

Teach your players during soccer coaching that holding someone or something else responsible is a symbol of insecurity. Rather they should take responsibility and consider setbacks as a part of the learning curve, not a failure that could shake confidence.

Also, in coaching high school soccer, the players should learn by heart the phrase “I’ll get the next one” to keep them going whenever they lose any opportunity.
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.

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. In football coaching, there is always a close call between judging physical and mental readiness, but in the end, physical readiness wins the battle.

To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. The spoken and unspoken messages of the player should be taken into account to ensure his or her ability to succeed in the game.

Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. Self-belief, hard work done and the mental preparation to face tough situations, hold the key to 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. The players must be accustomed to their doubts, mistakes, defeats and condemnation so as to establish the experience they need. It is always felt that he or she has the knowledge, has practiced it before and knows what to do next.

Never doubt it. 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.

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. The coach can build a mentally tough team only when he has devised a plan that supports a positive attitude aimed at winning.

The coach is an important and an influential authority figure in player’s lives. The coach’s body language, mind-set, and expressions can shape, strengthen, or harm the player’s confidence.

In coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is about meeting challenges with positive self control. For this reason, in practice as well as in competition, the starting point should be the coach.

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

A coach should display control in football coaching, when dealing with emotional setbacks notwithstanding personal feelings, with a view to create a mentally strong team.

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, another critical area for which the coach is responsible is handling mistakes and failure. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the mistakes. The coach has two choices.

One of the choices can be employing the failure as a prospect to provide advice and guiding the players towards their improvement. Persuade them to recommit themselves to the effort with renewed motivation.

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. Such a heartbreaking overreaction might 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. While soccer coaching, the coaches can help the players by questioning and listening them rather than always telling the players of their mistakes. 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.

We call it 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. “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?” can be taken as references.

The players should think all the way through and account for his or her version of reactions which are a fundamental 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.

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

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Even then they have to deal with many issues in coaching young players. These issues come up due to the inability to communicate properly. 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.

When coaches watch their kids playing, they tend to become emotional. Instead of acting as analytical observers, they become more of spectators. As such they are not able to see the key points that could make all the difference in their team’s performance. Here, they miss out on the important part of having a professional conversation aimed at getting a win.

Although coaches have a complete knowledge of the game, but they have a little training in communication. For example; in soccer coaching, use of a video or a flip chart is not very common since most coaches 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

This is especially important in coaching high school soccer since the players have been into the sport for quite some time. They have been working on these drills for some time but the standards are different. You can do away with the monotony of repetitive messages by frequently changing the layout of training.

You’ll be amazed to know that coaches tend to forget sometimes that it is people who carry out the trainings. Only with a view to execute the training program well, coaches tend to ignore every other aspect of it. 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.

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. They should therefore be taken and read correctly.

• Your language should be positive enough to push the players to try hard to perform well. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.

• 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. 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.