Coaching Soccer

In coaching high school soccer, you may wish to disagree but it’s true that communication is the most important aspect to get success. Coaching is an art of communication. It lets you speak to mind in the simplest way and allow the other to do the activity in exactly the same way.

When it comes to soccer coaching, I’ve observed that most of the coaches often are the ex-players. Still, there are several problems that they have to find solutions to. The reason why many of these issues show up is the coach’s inability to communicate. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.

These are described for you one at a time.

In the course of watching the young players on field, coaches often get emotional. The coaches become spectators instead of adopting a critical approach to observing the kids. 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 example; in soccer coaching, many coaches are not aware of the utility of a flip chart or a video. The daily practice gets monotonous when there are communication gaps even though the coach may be technically very sound.

Coaching Youth Soccer

This occupies greater importance in coaching high school soccer as the players are young but also know the various facets of the game. They have been performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. And one of the ways to avoid the boredom of repeating important messages is to keep varying the format.

You’ll be amazed to know that coaches tend to forget sometimes that it is people who carry out the trainings. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. 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.

In football coaching, there are some points that need special attention and they are as follows:

• All messages from the coach are important for players. So make sure that they are interpreted correctly.

• Your language should be positive enough to push the players to try hard to perform well. Let them become better players with every passing day rather than pointing out their weaknesses.

• 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!).

• Be proactive in communicating the problem the moment you see it coming.

• Reinforce the player’s self esteem by balancing praise with criticism. Tip the balance more towards praise with players in coaching high school  soccer.

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 it comes to coaching high school soccer, we must accept the fact that self-control is a choice just like confidence that players must make. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. It is a known fact that our emotional state influences our feelings and as a result of it, our performance is strengthened.

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.

Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. These are the 12 steps for your information.

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: Allow the players to make out the reason that affected their thinking in such a way that they lost their emotional stability.

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 example: Is it the guilt of letting the whole team down because of their performance?

5. Belief: The players should be taught to raise their expectations for themselves with self-control as one of the traits. Support them so they can change.

6. Reinforcement: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. So, as a coach, you must reward improved behavior of players on their way to permanent change.

7. Goals: Start with multiple smaller goals, so that you can take your players along the path to changes. Help the players understand the connection between thoughts, feelings, and actions.

8. Techniques: Set up multiple performance based methods to boost the confidence level. For example: When a particular situation comes up, this is the path that the players must go by.

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. Let the players understand that the ups and downs are integral parts of path to improvement.

11. Setbacks: Let the players understand that setbacks are there to stay. 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 bear in mind why they’re doing this. What will their future be like, if they don’t change.

We all agree that a perfect performance state for a soccer player is that of a relaxed promptness. This simply means use of full energy without stress.

Make no mistake about it. 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.

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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.

Speaking of coaching high school soccer, the outlook and behavior of the coach are the most important influences affecting a player’s performance. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.

The coach plays an influential and a key authority figure in the player’s career. The body language, attitude, and expressions of the coach can shape, reinforce, or damage the players self esteem and confidence.

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

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. 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.

As a result of the coach’s total belief in the ability of the team to reach their goals regardless of the barriers, the team gets a structure to build a mind-set on the same lines.

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.

One is to use failure as an opportunity to give the players feedback on how to improve. Influence them to recommit themselves to the attempt with transformed motivation.

The failure can be used as substantiation of the player’s insufficiency and evidence that he cannot meet the prospects. This emotional overreaction will de-motivate the players.

One way that players become mentally tough 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. They should be encouraged to talk about what they could have done better.

Such an exercise is called self-reference. Players can be encouraged to practice self reference by the coach for their improvement. 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?”

The players should think all the way through and account for his or her version of reactions which are a fundamental part of the learning process.

Whatever methods that you’ve just learnt, go ahead and start applying 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.

When it comes to coaching high school soccer, the first step towards success is the confidence building amongst players who have the potential to become brilliant 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. This is simply because success is the outcome of being confident of achieving it.

Confidence is a choice and your players have to first choose to become confident. Explain this point in coaching youth soccer by telling them the conduct to two parrots sitting on both shoulders.

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 other is the negative parrot, constantly warning 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. The players may have to make this decision on a daily basis. 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.

Similarly in coaching high school soccer, the most important self-conversation for any player missing an opportunity to score is the phrase “I’ll get the next one.”
The distress of the miss instantly motivates, hence ensuring no effect on confidence for the next strike.

Accurate and quick judgments regarding a player’s caliber and talent is a key to manage a successful team. Judging physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.

To facilitate this type of judgment, look for 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 comes from success. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. The phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is used over and over again to trigger off the players.

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. It is always felt that he or she has the knowledge, has practiced it before and knows what to do next.

Know this. 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.

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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.