Youth Soccer Drill

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. A coach should prepare a course that stresses the development of a positive winning attitude with a view to have a mentally tough team.

In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. 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 coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is about meeting challenges with positive self control. For this reason, in practice as well as in competition, the starting point should be the coach.

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 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.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach who wants a mentally tough team must demonstrate a controlled way to deal with emotional setbacks despite 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. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the 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. Persuade them to recommit themselves to the effort with renewed 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.

One way that players become mentally tough is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible 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.

This exercise is known as self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. The coach can discuss the situation by asking the players their reaction rather than giving them a definition of the situation. “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?” can be taken as references.

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.

Hence, apply these methods in coaching high school soccer.

Hence, you must subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community as it information in the form of videos, relevant articles and newsletters in abundance which will help you in being a better coach.

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.

In coaching high school soccer, it’s a fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. In soccer coaching, it’s the relation between emotions and thoughts that concludes the self control strategies. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts our performance.

You can aid your players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control with the 12 step strategy that I’m going to share with you. But make sure that your player’s only take these steps when they are sure of its value to them.

What’s more, the players should also be prepared to take full responsibility for the actions they take. The 12 step strategy is explained in the following paragraphs.

1. Awareness: When coaching youth soccer, help players identify their weak points. Let them examine when, where, and why loss of control has occurred previously on field.

2. Understanding: Help the players acknowledge the feeling that changed their thinking and caused them to lose their emotional steadiness.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Allow them to go back in time and recall situations where they did not lose control and where they did. And then they should determine the difference in their emotions, attitudes, and behavior.

4. Problem: Make an attempt to identify the exact problem in coaching high school soccer. For example: The player may be feeling guilty that he let the entire team down due to his actions.

5. Belief: Teach the players to raise their expectations for their own selves with self-control as one of the qualities. Encourage them to change.

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement has the potential to accelerate a change in behavior. So, as a coach, you must reward improved behavior of players on their way to permanent change.

7. Goals: Start with multiple smaller goals, so that you can take your players along the path to changes. You need to make the players understand the link between actions, thoughts, and feelings.

8. Techniques: Build a series of behavioral techniques for maintaining confidence. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.

9. Plan: In football coaching, train the players to systematically and considerably follow their goals.

10. Progress: Help them being patient. Help the players realize the value of ups and downs in the path to improvement.

11. Setbacks: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. Thus, utilize these to learn new things for improvement.

12. Remembrance: Last but by no means the least, make the players understand that they are trying to change for a reason. They must understand the importance of what they are doing. What would the change mean to them for their future?

We all agree that a perfect performance state for a soccer player is that of a relaxed promptness. In other words, the stress-free efficient performance.

This should not be taken lightly. Including relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and help players control their thinking so they can generate emotions that remove unnecessary tension and save energy.

There is lots of good information available in the form of articles, newsletters, and videos on youth soccer coaching community to help you learn new coaching techniques; hurry subscriptions are open.

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Practice Drills.

I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in coaching high school soccer. The actual meaning of coaching kids is the art of communicating with them. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

Majority of coaches in soccer coaching are the players who used to play the game in their younger days. Even then they have to deal with many issues in coaching young players. These issues come up due to the inability to communicate properly. As a coach, you need to work upon certain communication related problems for effective execution of your responsibilities.

These have been described one by one.

Coaches generally allow their emotions to become involved while watching their kids play. Instead of acting as analytical observers, they become more of spectators. They tend to overlook some chief points that could help the team improve on certain fronts. Here, they miss out on the important part of having a professional conversation aimed at getting a win.

Even though the coaches are well versed with the technicalities of the game, they are not trained specifically on communication. For example; use of flip charts and videos in soccer coaching is not applied by many coaches as they aren’t aware of them. The coach may be technically talented but if he not able to communicate properly, regular practice sessions get really boring for the kids.

Coaching Youth Soccer

It is even more important in case of coaching high school soccer because the players are not new to the game. They have been doing these soccer drills for some time but at different levels. And one of the ways to avoid the boredom of repeating important messages is to keep varying the format.

You’ll be amazed to know that coaches tend to forget sometimes that it is people who carry out the trainings. The objective of training is lost because the coaches get so much occupied in just conducting the sessions well. An example of ineffective communication by a coach is when he fails to use a player’s name while giving instructions which produces uncertainty.

There are certain guiding principles in football coaching which are as follows:

• Every message from the coach is equally important. They should therefore be taken and read correctly.

• Your messages should have a positive impact on the players to put their best foot forward. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.

• All players should get an equal opportunity to sit with you and learn. Research indicates that coaches spend a lot more time (up to seven times more!) with star players.

• Adopt a proactive approach to identify the impending problems and solve them.

• Accentuate your player’s self worth by balancing praise with criticism. Tip the balance more towards praise with players in coaching high school  soccer.

Accept as true. Application of these simple strategies to your training programs will have far reaching results for your team.

You have a lot more information coming your way if this is what really inspires you. Subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community and get tips, and tricks in form of articles, newsletters, as well as videos.

Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Coaching high school soccer.

In coaching high school soccer, the first and the foremost quality that the players need to have or develop is confidence if they wish to become complete players. When you declare that the players are under immense pressure, you as a coach are hinting to the fact that your players lack confidence to face a situation. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. When coaching youth soccer, illustrate this point by telling them the behaviors of two parrots sitting on either shoulder.

One parrot is a positive parrot that constantly motivates the players to take every challenge that comes in his way by saying “You can do it.” The second one is a negative parrot that is always cautioning the player “You can’t do this.” And clearly they have to choose which parrot to listen to.

Once the choice has been made, teach them to take responsibility for their actions. This choice may have to made every single day. Build confidence in the players by emphasizing their involvement in past successes and ready successful players to make a strong team.

Coaching Youth Soccer

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.

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.
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.

One of the keys to managing a successful team is your ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition. Judging mental readiness is often a bit tougher challenge than judging physical readiness in football coaching.

To facilitate this type of judgment, look for 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. And success in soccer is more likely when you know you have done everything you could to get ready for situations that might build pressure. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”

Experience is a building block of confidence. The players must be accustomed to their doubts, mistakes, defeats and condemnation so as to establish the experience they need. 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.

Never doubt it. While coaching high school soccer, building confidence is worked out on an everyday basis so, the players should echo upon the certain key steps to determine what works for them.

There is lot more for you to discover and for that subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that as tons of articles, videos, and newsletters that keep you updated with the latest and the best on soccer.

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 practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Coaching.