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. 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. 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.
3. Differences: Give them time to recollect situations when they did lose control and when they did not. Let them judge the distinction between their behavior, attitudes, and emotions then.
4. Problem: In coaching high school soccer, try to find out the exact problem. 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. Support them so they can change.
6. Reinforcement: A change in behavior is promoted by reinforcement. So, as a coach, you must reward improved behavior of players on their way to permanent change.
7. Goals: Set a series of small goals for players that will lead them along the road to change. Guide the players in understanding the correlation between way of thinking, thought process, and actions.
8. Techniques: Put together different behavioral action items to uphold the confidence level. For example: If a certain situation happens, this is the course that players must follow.
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. Let them know that improvement always comes in a series of ups and downs.
11. Setbacks: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. Therefore, try to learn something new from every setback.
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?
We all now that a soccer player who can act speedily with comfort is in a perfect performance state. In other words, the stress-free efficient performance.
This is of utmost importance. 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.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching