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. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.
The most important and a prominent authority figure in a player’s career is his or her coach. The body language, attitude, and expressions of the coach can shape, reinforce, or damage the players self esteem and confidence.
When coaching youth soccer, mental strength is required to meet the challenges through a positive willpower. For this reason, in practice as well as in competition, the starting point should be the coach.
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 competent coach will draw on ideas, narrative, and symbols, videos, and like that to shape the collective outlook of the team and ready them to be mentally strong on the playing field.
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.
Dealing with mistakes and failure is another area in coaching high school soccer, for which the coach is solely responsible. The coach’s reaction to failure is the key to player’s motivation and desire to work hard to correct mistakes. There are two option for the coach to choose from.
Utilizing failures as an opportunity to give feedback to the players and guiding them towards their improvement can be opted as the first choice. Persuade them to recommit themselves to the effort with renewed motivation.
The failure can be used as substantiation of the player’s insufficiency and evidence that he cannot meet the prospects. This poignant 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. The coaches can help the players by being quizzical and lending ears to them rather than pointing at their mistakes while soccer coaching. The players should be encouraged to talk about their better performance which they could deliver.
We call it self-reference. Players can be encouraged to practice self reference by the coach for their improvement. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. For 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.
So, start applying the methods you just learnt, 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