Free Soccer Drills

In coaching high school soccer, you may wish to disagree but it’s true that communication is the most important aspect to get success. The actual meaning of coaching kids is the art of communicating with them. 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. Yet, there are a number of issues that they are forced to handle. Majority of these issues come up due to communication lags. As a coach, you need to work upon certain communication related problems for effective execution of your responsibilities.

These have been described one by one.

Coaches generally allow their emotions to become involved while watching their kids play. The coaches become spectators instead of adopting a critical approach to observing the kids. They ignore the important facets of the game that could improve the team’s performance significantly. 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, use of a video or a flip chart is not very common since most coaches don’t know about them. The daily practice gets monotonous when there are communication gaps even though the coach may be technically very sound.

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 performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. By keep on changing training format, coaches can avoid the monotony of repeating the same messages again and again.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. Only with a view to execute the training program well, coaches tend to ignore every other aspect of it. For example; Sending out instructions without taking the player’s name leads to uncertainty and confusion.

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.

• 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.

• Strengthen the player’s self respect by matching criticism with praise. In coaching high school soccer, the balance should be a bit more towards the praise.

Believe my words. Your training programs will be immensely benefitted as a result of adopting these simple exercises.

You have a lot more information coming your way if this is what really inspires you. You can subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community which has tons to videos, and articles to improve your team’s overall performance.

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, it’s the relation between emotions and thoughts that concludes the self control strategies. 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. However, players should adopt this strategy only when they are certain of its utility for them.

The players should be ready to accept full responsibility for their acts as well. The 12 step strategy is explained in the following paragraphs.

1. Awareness: When coaching youth soccer, help players identify their weak points. Let them examine when, where, and why loss of control has occurred previously on field.

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 them recall various situations when they managed to maintain control and when he did lose 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: A players may be feeling responsible of letting the entire team down because of his actions.

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: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. To make the improved skills of players as their permanent skills, you, being a coach, must reward them.

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: To maintain the confidence level, employ a set of behavioral practices. 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 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 would be there in future for them, if they don’t try?

We all now that a soccer player who can act speedily with comfort is in a perfect performance state. It signifies the ability to use energy without any fear.

This should not be taken lightly. 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.

You should not wait to subscribe our youth soccer coaching community as by doing this you will be able to know lot more about soccer and soccer coaching skills with the help of various articles, newsletters, and videos available with us.

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. A coach should prepare a course that stresses the development of a positive winning attitude with a view to have a mentally tough team.

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.

In relation to coaching youth soccer, mental strength is about meeting the challenges with a positive attitude. So, it is the coach who should be the starting point in practice and competition both.

The coach can observe that closely controlled post-match schedule helps him or her in not getting either too low or too high. A successful coach will use ideas, stories, and metaphors, videos, and so on to shape the collective mindset of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in performance.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach who wants a mentally tough team must demonstrate a controlled way to deal with emotional setbacks despite personal feelings.

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.

Coping with failures and mistakes in coaching high school soccer is another area of responsibility for the coach. 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 of the choices can be employing the failure as a prospect to provide advice and guiding the players towards their improvement. Influence them to recommit themselves to the attempt with transformed motivation.

The player’s dearth and attestation that he cannot meet the expectations can be used as an evidence of failure. This emotional overreaction will de-motivate the players.

By making the players to accept the responsibility for their judgments, outlooks, and dealings and rejecting all possible excuses, players can be made mentally tough. In soccer coaching, players can be questioned and listened by the coaches rather than always being accused of their mistakes. The players can be motivated by having a one-to-one conversation with them and discussing with them about what they could have done better.

This can be referred to as 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?”

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.

The information in the form of videos, relevant articles and newsletters, that are posted on our youth soccer coaching community can help you in brushing yourself as a good coach, hence, subscribing it is advisable.

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. When you declare that the players are under immense pressure, you as a coach are hinting to the fact that your players lack confidence to face a situation. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

Confidence again is a matter of choice and only a player can make this choice. In coaching youth soccer, use the behaviors of two parrots perched on either shoulders to demonstrate this point.

Out of the two, one has a positive behavior and he keeps telling the player to face the challenges head on by saying “You can do it.” The second one is a negative parrot that is always cautioning the player “You can’t do this.” And clearly they have to choose which parrot to listen to.

Once the choice has been made, teach them to take responsibility for their actions. The players may have to make this decision on a daily basis. Develop brilliant players in your team by constantly reminding them of their participation in past successes to boost their confidence levels.

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.

Also, in coaching high school soccer, the players should learn by heart the phrase “I’ll get the next one” to keep them going whenever they lose any opportunity.
The distress of the miss instantly motivates, hence ensuring no effect on confidence for the next strike.

In a team, caliber, mental strength and judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition, hold the key for its success. Judging physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.

Understandable and apparent messages are required to make such judgments possible. It is necessary to deeply go through the player’s spoken and unspoken messages about his or her knack to succeed in the game.

Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. 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. “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail” is a phrase often used to motivate players.

Confidence is built on experience. The reservations, mistakes, losses and denunciation should be taken up calmly by the players so that their underpinning of experience can be built. 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.