Soccer Training Tips

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. In order to have a team that is mentally strong, the coaches should plan a course that strengthens a positive winning mind-set.

In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. 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. Thus, in both practice and competition, the coach should be the starting point.

In order to make sure that the coach does not get either too high or too low, he or she should pursue a disciplined post match routine. 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.

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 strong the players feels motivated to correct the mistakes made is largely dependent upon the coach’s reaction 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. The players should be persuaded to recommit themselves to the challenge with improved inspiration.

The player’s dearth and attestation that he cannot meet the expectations can be used as an evidence of failure. Such a heartbreaking overreaction might de-motivate the players.

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. 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.

This exercise is known as self-reference. The coach can encourage the players by encouraging the players to self reference. Asking the players of their reaction for the situation is a better option for a coach than giving his own view points or definition on it. Take an example: “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”

In this way, players must think through and account for his or her view points which are an important 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, the first and the foremost quality that the players need to have or develop is confidence if they wish to become complete players. Often when you say that the players have to play under pressure in a game, it indicates your player’s lack of confidence to handle any situation. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

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.

One is a positive parrot that pushes the player to accept and conquer every challenge coming his way by repeating “You can do it.” Then there is the other parrot who is full of negativity and keeps telling 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. 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

In soccer coaching, players should be made to know that blaming someone or something is a signal 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.
Thus, confidence for the next strike is remains unaffected because of the distress of the miss.

In a team, caliber, mental strength and judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition, hold the key for its success. In football coaching, there is always a close call between judging physical and mental readiness, but in the end, physical readiness wins the battle.

Understandable and apparent messages are required to make such judgments possible. 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. And success in soccer is more likely when you know you have done everything you could to get ready for situations that might build pressure. In order to make the players emotionally power-packed, a phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is frequently used.

Experience is essential to build confidence. 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. The feeling that he or she has the knowledge has some experience and knows how to handle the situations, always prevails.

Know this. Building of confidence in coaching high school soccer is an everyday task, so players should reflect on certain key steps to discover what works for them.

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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.

In coaching high school soccer, it’s a fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. Self-control strategies in soccer coaching depend upon the relationship between emotions and thoughts. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts 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. Still, it is better that players take up these steps only when they feel that it is going to be of value to them.

Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. The strategy has been given below in 12 steps for your reference.

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: 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. Have them decide the differences in their attitudes, behaviors, and emotions.

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: Help the players raise their own expectations including self-control as one of the character. Give confidence to players to change themselves.

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement encourages a change in behavior. To make the improved skills of players as their permanent skills, you, being a coach, must reward them.

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: Build a series of behavioral techniques for maintaining confidence. For example: Course of action must be clear in the minds of players when a certain situation arises.

9. Plan: In football coaching, help the players in learning an organized and efficient way to pursue their goals.

10. Progress: Tell them to learn the skill of patience. Let them understand the principle of gradual improvement including the ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Let the players understand that setbacks are there to stay. So, the best way is learn from them and become even stronger.

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 will their future be like, if they don’t change.

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.

You must not make any mistake about it. You must include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and train the players on how to control the thought process so that they can keep themselves stress-free.

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.

I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in coaching high school soccer. The term coaching signifies the art of communication. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

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. The reason why many of these issues show up is the coach’s inability to communicate. You must recognize that there are certain issues related to communication that need special attention if your job is to be made easier.

These have been described one by one.

In the course of watching the young players on field, coaches often get emotional. 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. The coaches fail to have an effective conversation that could help the players get to the winning post.

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. When the coach finds it difficult to communicate his messages clearly, it brings monotony to the game even if he has a complete knowledge of the game.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been working on these drills for some time but the standards are different. By keep on changing training format, coaches can avoid the monotony of repeating the same messages again and again.

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. An example of ineffective communication by a coach is when he fails to use a player’s name while giving instructions which produces uncertainty.

Some guiding principles for coaches in football coaching are given below:

• Every message coming from the coach carries equal importance. So ensure that they are understood completely and correctly.

• Convey your messages in a positive language to encourage players to play their best game. Let them become better players with every passing day rather than pointing out their weaknesses.

• Spend equal time with all 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.

• Reinforce the player’s self esteem by balancing praise with criticism. 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.