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.
In relation to coaching youth soccer, mental strength is about meeting the challenges with a positive attitude. 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 exploit ideas, anecdotes, and images, videos, and all that to shape the collective attitude of the team and train them to be mentally tough in practice.
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.
In coaching high school soccer, handling mistakes and failure is another important area of responsibility for the coach. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the mistakes. There are two option for the coach to choose from.
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. 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. While soccer coaching, the coaches can help the players by questioning and listening them rather than always telling the players of their mistakes. By discussing about their better performance which they could’ve delivered, the players can be encouraged.
We call it 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. In order to explain, we can take the instance “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”
It is important for the players to think deeply and thoroughly and then account for their reactions which are very critical 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.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching