Youth 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. Self-control strategies in soccer coaching depend upon the relationship between emotions and thoughts. All of us know our mental state influences our passions that accordingly enhance our performance.

I’ll share with you a 12 step strategy to help players learn the ability and 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 12 step strategy is explained in the following paragraphs.

1. Awareness: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. Have them analyze where, when, and how they lost control on field during the 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 the players recall situations in the past when they did and did not lost control. Let them judge the distinction between their behavior, attitudes, and emotions then.

4. Problem: Make an attempt to identify the exact problem in coaching high school soccer. For instance: It may be the guilty feeling in a player that he let the whole team down due to his acts.

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. Being a coach, you need to appreciate the good changes in the players to ensure that these remain forever.

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: To maintain the confidence level, employ a set of behavioral practices. 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: Tell them to be patient. 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 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 now that a soccer player who can act speedily with comfort is in a perfect performance state. It means possessing energy without tension.

You must not make any 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.

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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 term coaching signifies the art of communication. This has the effect of expressing yourself to people with a view to perform them things in precisely the same manner.

When it comes to soccer coaching, I’ve observed that most of the coaches often are the ex-players. 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. As a coach, you need to work upon certain communication related problems for effective execution of your responsibilities.

These are described for you one at a time.

When coaches watch their kids playing, they tend to become emotional. Instead of acting as analytical observers, they become more of spectators. As such they are not able to see the key points that could make all the difference in their team’s performance. As such they lose the focus on directing the team towards a win by way of an effective conversation.

Even though the coaches are well versed with the technicalities of the game, they are not trained specifically on communication. For instance; most coaches don’t use videos or flip charts in soccer coaching because they don’t know about 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. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.

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. For example; Sending out instructions without taking the player’s name leads to uncertainty and confusion.

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

• All messages from the coach are important for players. So make sure that they are interpreted 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. 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. In coaching high school soccer, the balance should be a bit more towards the praise.

Believe me. Once you start to apply this in your training programs, the benefits will far exceed your expectations.

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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 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. In order to have a team that is mentally strong, the coaches should plan a course that strengthens a positive winning mind-set.

The most important and a prominent authority figure in a player’s career is his or her coach. The body language, attitude, and expressions of the coach can shape, reinforce, or damage the players self esteem and confidence.

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.

The coach can observe that closely controlled post-match schedule helps him or her in not getting either too low or too high. 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

A coach should display control in football coaching, when dealing with emotional setbacks notwithstanding personal feelings, with a view to create a mentally strong team.

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.

In coaching high school soccer, another critical area for which the coach is responsible is handling mistakes and failure. One of the keys to a player’s motivation and the wish to work towards correcting mistakes is the coach’s response to failure. A coach has got only two choices.

Utilizing failures as an opportunity to give feedback to the players and guiding them towards their improvement can be opted as the first choice. 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.

To make players mentally strong, one way which can be adopted 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 can be referred to as 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. For example; “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. Often when you say that the players have to play under pressure in a game, it indicates your player’s lack of confidence to handle any situation. I say this because only confident players expect to win and get successful.

Confidence is a choice and your players have to first choose to become confident. 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.” The second one is a negative parrot that is always cautioning the player “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.

After they’ve made a choice, train them to take the accountability for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. 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

Train the players of the fact that in soccer coaching that putting the blame on something or someone else is a mark 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.”
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.

Such a judgment needs 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. 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. 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. Players must be conditioned to take in their stride all fears, mistakes, defeats, and criticism to build the foundation of 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.

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 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.