Soccer Trainer

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. The coach can build a mentally tough team only when he has devised a plan that supports a positive attitude aimed at winning.

The coach is an important and an influential authority figure in player’s lives. The coach’s body language, mind-set, and expressions can shape, strengthen, or harm the player’s confidence.

When coaching youth soccer, mental strength is required to meet the challenges through a positive willpower. Therefore, the coach must be the starting point in both practice and competition.

The coach will find that a disciplined post-match routine is helpful in ensuring that he or she does not get either too high or too low. 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.

Coaching Youth Soccer

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.

Coping with failures and mistakes in coaching high school soccer is another area of responsibility for the coach. The coach’s reaction to failure is the key to player’s motivation and desire to work hard to correct mistakes. The coach has two choices.

One of the choices can be employing the failure as a prospect to provide advice and guiding the players towards their improvement. Persuade them to recommit themselves to the effort with renewed motivation.

The player’s dearth and attestation that he cannot meet the expectations can be used as an evidence of failure. This poignant overreaction will de-motivate the players.

By making the players to accept the responsibility for their judgments, outlooks, and dealings and rejecting all possible excuses, players can be made mentally tough. During the course of soccer coaching, coaches can help by questioning and listening rather than always tell the players what they did wrong. They should be encouraged to talk about what they could have done better.

This can be referred to as self-reference. The coach can take part in this by always encouraging the players to self reference. 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. Take an 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.

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, the connection between emotions and thoughts establishes the self-control strategies. We all know that our state of mind influences our emotions, which in turn strengthens our performance.

With a view to help the players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control, there is a 12 step strategy which I shall discuss with you. Still, it is better that players take up these steps only when they feel that it is going to be of value to them.

Also, players must be ready to take full accountability for their actions. These are the 12 steps for your information.

1. Awareness: Assist the players in finding out their weaknesses in coaching youth soccer. Help your players evaluate the reasons how, where and when they lost control on the ground in their past.

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: Let them recall various situations when they managed to maintain control and when he did lose control. Let them gauge the difference in their attitudes, emotions, and behavior.

4. Problem: When coaching high school soccer, attempt to pinpoint the problem. For example: A players may be feeling responsible of letting the entire team down because of his actions.

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

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement has the potential to accelerate a change in behavior. To make the improved skills of players as their permanent skills, you, being a coach, must reward them.

7. Goals: Set a series of small goals for players that will lead them along the road to change. Help the players understand the connection between thoughts, feelings, and actions.

8. Techniques: To maintain the confidence level, employ a set of behavioral practices. For example: If a certain situation happens, this is the course that players must follow.

9. Plan: In football coaching, teach a planned and systematic way of chasing the goals to players.

10. Progress: Tell them to learn the skill of patience. Let them understand the principle of gradual improvement including the ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Teach the players on how to live with the setbacks that are unavoidable. So, the better is to use these to learn new ways to tackle these.

12. Remembrance: Last but an important point is to let the players identify the good reason behind the change. They should always be clear about what are they doing and why. How important the change is for their future?

For a soccer player to achieve a perfect performance state, the player must be trained for relaxed swiftness. This simply means use of full energy without stress.

Make no mistake about it. To teach the players in channelizing their energy in way that they are able to produce emotions to help them get rid of tension, include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer.

You should not wait to subscribe our youth soccer coaching community as by doing this you will be able to know lot more about soccer and soccer coaching skills with the help of various articles, newsletters, and videos available with us.

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.

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. You tend to spot the player’s weakness in terms of less confidence to cope with a situation whenever you use the term “pressure” in the game. This is because it is only with confidence that we expect success.

Like many choices we make, confidence as an attribute is also chosen by players. Explain this point in coaching youth soccer by telling them the conduct to two parrots sitting on both shoulders.

One of them is the positive parrot, always urging the player to face up to the challenge saying “You can do it.” The other is the negative parrot, constantly warning the player “You can’t do this.” That’s why it the player who has to make a choice between which parrot to follow.

Once the players have made up their minds, teach them to become liable for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. Develop brilliant players in your team by constantly reminding them of their participation in past successes to boost their confidence levels.

Coaching Youth Soccer

When it comes to soccer coaching, let it be known that blaming somebody or something else is a symptom of insecurity. Rather they should take responsibility and consider setbacks as a part of the learning curve, not a failure that could shake confidence.

Also, in coaching high school soccer, the players should learn by heart the phrase “I’ll get the next one” to keep them going whenever they lose any opportunity.
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.

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 mental readiness is often a bit tougher challenge than judging physical readiness in football coaching.

Understandable and apparent messages are required to make such judgments possible. Look for both verbal and non verbal messages that the player is sure of his or her ability to succeed in the game.

Confidence comes from 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. “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail” is a phrase often used to motivate players.

Confidence grows up with experience. 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.

Don’t take it for granted. Building of confidence is an everyday task in coaching high school soccer, so players ought to reflect on positive and main steps for their realization.

It is advisable to subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community as lot more can be determined by the newsletters, videos and articles which keep you updated about the latest developments in 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.

I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in coaching high school soccer. The art of communicating to the team is what coaching truly is. It explains what you want of people in such a way that allows them to perform it.

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Still, there are several problems that they have to find solutions to. Most of these issues are a result of lack of communication. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.

I’ll explain them one by one.

Emotions of the coaches take over their minds while they are watching their kids play on field. Instead of acting as analytical observers, they become more of spectators. They ignore the important facets of the game that could improve the team’s performance significantly. They therefore lose the opportunity to have an objective conversation aimed at winning the game.

Although coaches have a complete knowledge of the game, but they have a little training in communication. For example; in soccer coaching, use of a video or a flip chart is not very common since most coaches don’t know about 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

In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been doing these soccer drills for some time but at different levels. By keep on changing training format, coaches can avoid the monotony of repeating the same messages again and again.

It may come as a surprise to you that coaches often forget that their training sessions are carried out by people. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. For example; Sending out instructions without taking the player’s name leads to uncertainty and confusion.

Some guidelines meant for coaches in football coaching include the following:

• All messages that come from the coach are very important. So ensure that they are understood completely and correctly.

• Convey your messages in a positive language to encourage players to play their best game. Allow them to grow and become better players instead of highlighting their flaws.

• Make sure you spend quality time with all your players. Research in this filed shows that coaches tend to spend comparatively more time with the best players (up to seven times more!).

• Communicate the potential issues that could arise and have a solution ready.

• Add force to the player’s confidence by harmonizing criticism with praise. When it comes to coaching high school soccer, tilt the balance slightly more towards praise.

Trust me. When you apply these rules to your training sessions, the benefits will be much more that you’ll expect.

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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.