Soccer Drills

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.

In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. It’s the body language, outlook, and expressions of the coach that can outline, add force to, or damage the players self esteem.

In relation to coaching youth soccer, mental strength is about meeting the challenges with a positive attitude. Thus, in both practice and competition, the coach should be the starting point.

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. An experienced coach will apply ideas, chronicle, and descriptions, videos, etc to shape the collective approach of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in their game.

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, handling mistakes and failure is another important 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. There are two option for the coach to choose from.

To give a response to the players in order to improve them, their failures can be used as an opportunity to correct them. The players should be persuaded to recommit themselves to the challenge with improved inspiration.

Second, use failure as evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that they cannot meet expectations. This emotional 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. In soccer coaching, players can be questioned and listened by the coaches rather than always being accused of their mistakes. By discussing about their better performance which they could’ve delivered, the players can be encouraged.

Such an exercise is called self-reference. The coach can encourage the players by encouraging the players to self reference. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. In order to explain, we can take the instance “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”

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.

So go ahead and apply these methods in coaching high school soccer that you’ve just learnt.

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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, the first and the foremost quality that the players need to have or develop is confidence if they wish to become complete players. 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. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

The players must promise themselves and accept confidence as an attribute to develop. In coaching youth soccer, use the behaviors of two parrots perched on either shoulders to demonstrate this point.

One is a positive parrot that pushes the player to accept and conquer every challenge coming his way by repeating “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.” 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. Develop successful players in your team by helping them build strong inner confidence by focusing on their contribution to success or failure.

Coaching Youth Soccer

When it comes to soccer coaching, let it be known that blaming somebody or something else is a symptom 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.

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.
Thus, confidence for the next strike is remains unaffected because of the distress of the miss.

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 physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.

Understandable and apparent messages are required to make such judgments possible. It is necessary to deeply go through the player’s spoken and unspoken messages about his or her knack to succeed in the game.

Success gives rise to confidence. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. In order to make the players emotionally power-packed, a phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is frequently used.

Confidence is built on experience. The reservations, mistakes, losses and denunciation should be taken up calmly by the players so that their underpinning of experience can be built. 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.

Make no mistake about it. 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.

There is a good amount of information in the form of articles, videos and newsletters posted on our youth soccer coaching community which keep you updated with the latest and the best in soccer, hence you should subscribe it.

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 fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts our performance.

I’ll explain to you a 12 step strategy that’ll allow you to assist your players in learning the discipline of self-control. However, players should adopt this strategy only when they are certain of its utility for them.

Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. The strategy has been given below in 12 steps for your reference.

1. Awareness: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. 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: Give them time to recollect situations when they did lose control and when they did not. Let them gauge the difference in their attitudes, emotions, and behavior.

4. Problem: When it comes to coaching high school soccer, try to point out the real problem. For example: The player may be feeling guilty that he let the entire team down due to his actions.

5. Belief: Help the players raise their own expectations including self-control as one of the character. Encourage them to change.

6. Reinforcement: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. To make the improved skills of players as their permanent skills, you, being a coach, must reward them.

7. Goals: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. You need to make the players understand the link between actions, thoughts, and feelings.

8. Techniques: Set up multiple performance based methods to boost the confidence level. For example: Course of action must be clear in the minds of players when a certain situation arises.

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

10. Progress: Teach them how to be patent. Help the players realize the value of ups and downs in the path to improvement.

11. Setbacks: Train the players to accept that setbacks are bound to happen from time to time. Therefore, try to learn something new from every setback.

12. Remembrance: Last but not the least, help the players understand that there is a reason behind their attempts to change. They must understand the importance of what they are doing. What would be there in future for them, if they don’t try?

For a soccer player to achieve a perfect performance state, the player must be trained for relaxed swiftness. It signifies the ability to use energy without any fear.

This should not be taken lightly. 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.

You must subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community to get access to plenty of articles, newsletters, and videos to know new and improved soccer skillsyou’re your players.

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. Coaching is an art of communication. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

Speaking of soccer coaching, almost all the coaches are the former players who decide to take on as coaches. Yet, there are a number of issues that they are forced to handle. The reason why many of these issues show up is the coach’s inability to communicate. You must recognize that there are certain issues related to communication that need special attention if your job is to be made easier.

These are described for 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. They fail to notice the important points that could better their team’s performance. They therefore lose the opportunity to have an objective conversation aimed at winning the game.

Though the coaches today are complete professionals fully acquainted with the game, they lack communication training. For example; use of flip charts and videos in soccer coaching is not applied by many coaches as they aren’t aware of them. When the coach finds it difficult to communicate his messages clearly, it brings monotony to the game even if he has a complete knowledge of the game.

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 performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. By keep on changing training format, coaches can avoid the monotony of repeating the same messages again and again.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. The objective of training is lost because the coaches get so much occupied in just conducting the sessions well. When a coach tries to instruct something to the play but does not use that player’s name, it creates confusion and is an apt example of bad communication.

Some guiding principles for coaches in football coaching are given below:

• All messages from the coach are important for players. So it’s necessary that they are deduced correctly.

• Your messages should have a positive impact on the players to put their best foot forward. Challenge them to be better rather than punishing them for being poor.

• Pay equal attention to each player in the team. Studies indicate that coaches spend relatively more time with star players in team (up to seven times more!).

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

• Strengthen the player’s self respect by matching criticism with praise. When it comes to coaching high school soccer, tilt the balance slightly more towards praise.

Believe my words. Your training programs will be immensely benefitted as a result of adopting these simple exercises.

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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.