Coaching Youth Soccer | Buffing Up

Coaching High School Soccer: 10 Sure-fire Tips To Self-Control

Jun 082010

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.

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.

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. Help your players evaluate the reasons how, where and when they lost control on the ground 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: Is it the guilt of letting the whole team down because of their performance?

5. Belief: The players should manage to raise their expectations from them including self-control as one of the behaviors. Give confidence to players to change themselves.

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement has the potential to accelerate a change in behavior. Being a coach, you need to appreciate the good changes in the players to ensure that these remain forever.

7. Goals: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. Help the players understand the connection between thoughts, feelings, 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. Thus, utilize these to learn new things for improvement.

12. Remembrance: Finally another important point is making the players understand the importance of the reason for they are trying 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.

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.

You must not make any mistake about it. You must include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and train the players on how to control the thought process so that they can keep themselves stress-free.

There is lots of good information available in the form of articles, newsletters, and videos on youth soccer coaching community to help you learn new coaching techniques; hurry subscriptions are open.

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.

Coaching High School Soccer: 5 Ways To Be Mentally Tough

Exercise No Responses »

Jun 062010

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. 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. The body language, experiences, and attitude of the coach are key attributes that can shape, reinforce, or damage the player’s sense of worth and confidence.

With respect to coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is all about meeting challenges with a positive outlook. 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

In football coaching, the coach should aim at building a mentally tough team by demonstrating his or her ability to cope with emotional setbacks in spite of personal feelings.

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.

One is to use failure as an opportunity to give the players feedback on how to improve. Convince them to recommit themselves to the endeavor with renewed enthusiasm.

The player’s dearth and attestation that he cannot meet the expectations can be used as an evidence of failure. This poignant 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. In soccer coaching, players can be questioned and listened by the coaches rather than always being accused of their mistakes. They should be encouraged to talk about what they could have done better.

We call it self-reference. The coach can take part in this by always 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?”

This way the players must think through and account for his or her reactions which are a vital part of the learning process.

Hence, apply these methods in coaching high school soccer.

Hence, you must subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community as it information in the form of videos, relevant articles and newsletters in abundance which will help you in being a better coach.

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.

5 Simple Steps To Coaching Soccer Drills

BodyBuilding No Responses »

Jun 062010

Coaching soccer drills

Before you get on with coaching soccer drills to kids, let me share with you some teaching ideas that are sure to help you, whether you agree or not. Let’s say that the soccer practice has one broad goal for both the coach and the player and it is to have fun while participating in the practice sessions.

Herein, you must remain careful otherwise you’ll not be able to follow the fun part. Consequently, identify such objectives that are particularly important for you as a coach and also equally important for the team. Some examples are; focus on player’s individual soccer skills, promote the importance of their physical fitness, and help them grow into mature, professional, and sporting soccer players.

Since you are the coach, you only are responsible for setting high standards of sportsmanship for players. Support them in developing a sporting attitude, a feeling of team spirit, and an attitude of fair play. There are several objectives important in teaching soccer that can be incorporated in your list along with these.

The theory of winning is one concept that I’d like to stress upon when it comes to coaching youth soccer. When you coach your kids, you must instill an open concept of winning in their minds. Teach them that as long as their performance is out of ordinary on the field, they are winners, no matter what the final result.

Soccer Coaching

This will take away the pressure off the kids and they’ll focus more on playing their best game rather than just winning it.

Coaching soccer drills requires you to give clear and precise instructions to your team so that they get the desired results. Before coaching, you need to teach your players about some explicit do’s and don’ts in soccer. The variation between coaching and teaching is prominent because coaching deals with a bunch of players who already play soccer pretty well.

In the process of coaching drills, it is nice to first impart 5 to 6 demonstrations about a drill to the kids and then let them practice it themselves. It is because kids have a tendency to learn quickly by watching than by listening. If you try to explain everything as a lecture, they may not get it. Relatively, they imitate perfectly.

So, as a general rule, demonstrate the skills yourself whenever possible.

Finally, but still very important is your ability to keep the kids engaged in important activities. This becomes even more important when the weather is windy, wet, or cold. It’s a fact that all kids love to play in the rain. Hence, instead of simply cancelling the session, it makes more sense to have them play soccer games or something like that.

Just make sure that in a situation like this, your kids have an extra layer of clothing and proper footwear.

Now, it is time to add these tips to your training program and make the most of them. You will be surprised by the results.

To access more similar tips on coaching soccer drills, enroll for our youth soccer coaching community that has tons of useful tips and tricks on youth soccer coaching.

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 soccer drills.

Coaching High School Soccer: How To Teach Effectively

BodyBuilding No Responses »

May 212010

Coaching high school soccer

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.

Majority of coaches in soccer coaching are the players who used to play the game in their younger days. Then also they have to face a number of issues while coaching young players. 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.

Emotions of the coaches take over their minds while they are watching their kids play on field. 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; in soccer coaching, many coaches are not aware of the utility of a flip chart or a video. It’s important for the coach to know the game well but if he is unable to communicate his thoughts, the training gets repetitive.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been doing these soccer drills for some time but at different levels. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. For instance; the communication is incomplete when an instruction is given to a player but without his/ her name thus making it difficult for any of them to apply it.

Some guidelines meant for coaches in football coaching include the following:

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

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.

• All players should get an equal opportunity to sit with you and learn. It has come to light through various studies that coaches spend much more time with their top players (up to seven times more!).

• Don’t wait for the problems to arise to sort them out.

• 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.

There’s not limit to the amount of information that you can lay your hands on. You just have to subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community to get all the latest and relevant information pertaining to the game.

Coach Youth Soccer: 3 Simple But Effective Training Drills

BodyBuilding No Responses »

Mar 212010

Coach Youth Soccer

Understand this! In order to coach youth soccer, it is always difficult to think and create new drills that are interesting as well as useful for the kids. In teaching soccer, the biggest difficulty is to keep thinking about new ideas that make the training for kids interesting.

Read through some tips below that you can teach youth soccer players. These allow them to concentrate on the game, become good at it, and at the same time, have fun with the game.

Teach the boys dribbling and shooting: This is a straight-forward drill that all the players can take part in at the same time. Make the players stand on a single goal line. Now, scatter a lot of balls all over the field. Then, ask the kids to go after the balls and move as if they are attacking the opponent goal post. They should also hit the ball as soon as they get a chance.

This drill helps them build stamina, confidence, and also improves their dribbling skills. As the kids do not face any opposition while moving forward, it reflects their style of playing soccer.

Coaching Youth Soccer

Understanding to pass the ball: Instruct the players to make a line at a distant corner of the field. Tell them to run towards you as fast as possible as soon as you have finished counting till 3. When they are running towards you, they should also try to take over the ball from the other player who has it. When you say stop, the player who has the ball must pass it to another player.

When you coach youth soccer, these games make the kids showcase their best skills in passing and dribbling. They also learn the art of stealing the ball from other players which is very important.

Touch and Go: It’s a very interesting game which kids love to play. Make the young players stand in two queues not more than 40 feet from the goal post. Also, the goalie should defend the goalpost. Position yourself anywhere amongst the two lines.

You pass the ball to one line and subsequently coach them to shoot or pass the ball with one stroke only. The idea is to translate the ball into a goal. The goalkeeper must then return the ball and the practice continues.

If you have more than one goalkeeper in the team, keep them alternating between different sessions. This game involves team effort and also improves the shooting skills. The game also provides the opportunity to learn the skill of saving the ball from getting to goalpost.

Retaining the possession of the ball: This drill helps the players learn to move forward with the ball saving it from opponents. Take two players, one acts as the defender and the other attacker. Now let them both play their roles in the field and the one who succeeds to take over another wins a point.

These are simple techniques to coach youth soccer. Your kids can put these into practice since they entertain your kids in addition to helping them learn. If you’re interested in knowing more about such tips, be a part of our youth soccer coaching community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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 Drills.

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