If you are like me, you probably know that in Coaching high school soccer, the journey to becoming a complete player begins by building confidence. 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. I say this because only confident players expect to win and get successful.
The players must promise themselves and accept confidence as an attribute to develop. Explain this point in coaching youth soccer by telling them the conduct to two parrots sitting on both shoulders.
Out of the two, one has a positive behavior and he keeps telling the player to face the challenges head on by saying “You can do it.” The other parrot has the tendency to de-motivate the players saying “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.
Also teach them to take full responsibility of the consequences that follow their choice. And this may be an everyday decision. Build confidence in the players by emphasizing their involvement in past successes and ready successful players to make a strong team.
Teach your players during soccer coaching that holding someone or something else responsible is a symbol of insecurity. Rather teach players to take the setbacks as an integral part of the learning curve and not something to deter their confidence levels.
When coaching high school soccer, condition the players to see every lost opportunity as a lesson and they should keep telling themselves “I’ll get the next one.”
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.
A team is said to be successful if you have the ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive in competition. In football coaching, there is always a close call between judging physical and mental readiness, but in the end, physical readiness wins the battle.
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.
Confidence is the fruit of success. When you are completely satisfied with your work that you have done and when you are ready to face a pressure – cooker scenario which is anytime possible, you achieve success in soccer. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”
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.
Never doubt it. 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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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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 training fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Youth Soccer Drills
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