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. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts our performance.
You can aid your players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control with the 12 step strategy that I’m going to share with you. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance for 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. Let them examine when, where, and why loss of control has occurred previously on field.
2. Understanding: Let the players find out and admit the reason that influenced their thoughts and resulted in them losing their emotional poise.
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: The players should be taught to raise their expectations for themselves with self-control as one of the traits. Give confidence to players to change themselves.
6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement has the potential to accelerate a change in behavior. 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: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. Assist the players in identifying the relationship between opinions, outlook, and actions.
8. Techniques: Put together different behavioral action items to uphold the confidence level. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.
9. Plan: In football coaching, teach a planned and systematic way of chasing the goals to players.
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: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. So, the better is to use these to learn new ways to tackle these.
12. Remembrance: Last but not the least, help the players understand that there is a reason behind their attempts to change. The players must always know that why and what are they doing. What will their future be like, if they don’t change.
It is well known that a soccer player must act swiftly and yet comfortably to be perfect performer. 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.
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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.