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. In order to have a team that is mentally strong, the coaches should plan a course that strengthens a positive winning mind-set.
The most important and a prominent authority figure in a player’s career is his or her coach. 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 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. 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.
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. The coach’s reaction to failure is the key to player’s motivation and desire to work hard to correct mistakes. A coach has got only two choices.
To give a response to the players in order to improve them, their failures can be used as an opportunity to correct them. Influence them to recommit themselves to the attempt with transformed motivation.
Second, use failure as evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that they cannot meet expectations. This poignant overreaction will de-motivate the players.
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. The coaches can help the players by being quizzical and lending ears to them rather than pointing at their mistakes while soccer coaching. 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. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. “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.
So go ahead and apply these methods in coaching high school soccer that you’ve just learnt.
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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.