Like any other sport, in coaching high school soccer too, confidence is the prerequisite that each players need to discover and instill in him or herself to get successful. 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 simply because success is the outcome of being confident of achieving it.
Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. In coaching youth soccer, use the behaviors of two parrots perched on either shoulders to demonstrate this point.
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.” That’s why it the player who has to make a choice between which parrot to follow.
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. Develop successful players in your team by helping them build strong inner confidence by focusing on their contribution to success or failure.
Teach your players during soccer coaching that holding someone or something else responsible is a symbol of insecurity. As a matter of fact, players should be trained on taking every setback as a lesson to become even more confident and not to feel discouraged.
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. 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. 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 gives rise to confidence. Self-belief, hard work done and the mental preparation to face tough situations, hold the key to success in soccer. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”
Confidence grows up with experience. The reservations, mistakes, losses and denunciation should be taken up calmly by the players so that their underpinning of experience can be built. The feeling of he or she having the knowledge, a little more know – how due to experience and thus, the thought process of planning the next step, prevails.
Know this. 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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