Soccer Lessons

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. 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. I say this because only confident players expect to win and get successful.

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.

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.” Then there is the other parrot who is full of negativity and keeps telling the player “You can’t do this.” Without a doubt, it’s the player who has to choose which parrot to take note of.

Also teach them to take full responsibility of the consequences that follow their choice. And this may be an everyday decision. Prepare a team of successful players full of confidence by directing their attention, energy, and enthusiasm in practice towards their role in past success.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In soccer coaching, players should be made to know that blaming someone or something is a signal 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.

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.
Automatically, the confidence for the next strike overshadows the distress of the miss.

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. 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.

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.”

Confidence is built on 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. It is the feeling that he or she has the knowledge, has been there before, and knows what to look forward to.

Don’t take it for granted. 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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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.

In coaching high school soccer it’s a proven fact that self-control is a choice and players have to choose it just like they do for confidence. In soccer coaching, it’s the relation between emotions and thoughts that concludes the self control strategies. All of us know our mental state influences our passions that accordingly enhance 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.

The players should be ready to accept full responsibility for their acts as well. The strategy has been given below in 12 steps for your reference.

1. Awareness: Help the players figure out their weak points during the course of coaching youth soccer. Allow them to investigate when, where and how loss of control happened on field in their past.

2. Understanding: Make the players realize why their thinking changed and how it caused them to lose their emotional balance.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Let the players recall situations in the past when they did and did not lost control. Have them decide the differences in their attitudes, behaviors, and emotions.

4. Problem: When it comes to coaching high school soccer, try to point out the real problem. For example: A players may be feeling responsible of letting the entire team down because of his actions.

5. Belief: The players should manage to raise their expectations from them including self-control as one of the behaviors. Persuade them that they can change.

6. Reinforcement: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. Therefore, you must not forget your duty as a coach to recognize and honor the improvements of players so that they stick to these.

7. Goals: Start with multiple smaller goals, so that you can take your players along the path to changes. Guide the players in understanding the correlation between way of thinking, thought process, and actions.

8. Techniques: To maintain the confidence level, employ a set of behavioral practices. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.

9. Plan: In football coaching, teach the players to pursue their goals in a planned and systematic way.

10. Progress: Tell them to learn the skill of patience. Let them know that improvement always comes in a series of ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Teach the players on how to live with the setbacks that are unavoidable. Therefore, try to learn something new from every setback.

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?

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.

This is of utmost importance. Coaching high school soccer must include relaxation techniques so that the players can learn to be in-charge of their emotions to save energy and kill any fears.

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.

When it comes to coaching high school soccer, communication is the most vital part to consider on way to achieve success. The actual meaning of coaching kids is the art of communicating with them. This has the effect of expressing yourself to people with a view to perform them things in precisely the same manner.

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. Majority of these issues come up due to communication lags. You must recognize that there are certain issues related to communication that need special attention if your job is to be made easier.

Let me explain them to you one at a time.

In the course of watching the young players on field, coaches often get emotional. They tend to become spectators rather than analytical observers. As such they are not able to see the key points that could make all the difference in their team’s performance. The coaches fail to have an effective conversation that could help the players get to the winning post.

Though the coaches today are complete professionals fully acquainted with the game, they lack communication training. 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. It’s important for the coach to know the game well but if he is unable to communicate his thoughts, the training gets repetitive.

Coaching Youth Soccer

This is especially important in coaching high school soccer since the players have been into the sport for quite some time. They have been performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. You can do away with the monotony of repetitive messages by frequently changing the layout of training.

You’ll be amazed to know that coaches tend to forget sometimes that it is people who carry out the trainings. They get so absorbed in the training and coaching as a process that they lose their ground. For example; Sending out instructions without taking the player’s name leads to uncertainty and confusion.

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

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

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Allow them to grow and become better players instead of highlighting their flaws.

• Pay equal attention to each player in the team. 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. 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.

When coaching high school soccer, it is the behavior and approach of the coach that has a major impact on the performance of the players. A coach should prepare a course that stresses the development of a positive winning attitude with a view to have a mentally tough team.

The most important and a prominent authority figure in a player’s career is his or her coach. 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. So, it is the coach who should be the starting point in practice and competition both.

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.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach must show the ability to deal handle emotional setbacks regardless of personal feelings in order to build a mentally strong team.

If the coach shows an unwavering belief in the team’s ability to achieve despite the obstacles, then the team has a framework for building the same mind-set and will become increasingly motivated.

In coaching high school soccer, another critical area for which the coach is responsible is handling mistakes and failure. How strong the players feels motivated to correct the mistakes made is largely dependent upon the coach’s reaction to failure. There are two option for the coach to choose from.

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

Making use of the failure as an evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that he cannot meet the expectations, can be the second choice. This emotional 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. While soccer coaching, the coaches can help the players by questioning and listening them rather than always telling the players of their mistakes. The players should be encouraged to talk about their better performance which they could deliver.

This can be referred to as self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. Take an example: “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”

This way the players must think through and account for his or her reactions which are a vital 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.