I had a conversation recently from a coach who is based in New York.
If you’ve been reading my articles on The Coaches Training Room for a while then you may have noticed that I talk about confidence all the time.
This coach and I spent a good hour over a Zoom call talking about the importance of confidence for soccer players and teams.
During our call I shared with this coach different ways how I personally coach my players at The Football Domain Academy to become tougher mentally because I know that this is an area of the game that most players around the world struggle with.
I want to talk with you about the importance of mental performance training and how to help your players to build their self-confidence so they don’t get nervous and hold back during games.
Mental performance training is about improving your player’s attitudes and their mental toughness to help them perform to their full potential and to identify what their limiting beliefs are.
Mental performance training is commonly used by many elite soccer athletes to help improve their focus, confidence and deal with distractions. Many players have the ability to concentrate, but often their focus is displaced on the wrong areas such as when a player misses a penalty kick. Often, these players may say to themselves “I’m not good enough”, or “I’m afraid of kicking the next one in case I miss again” which is a result-oriented focus. Much of my instruction on focus when I coach my players at The Football Domain Academy deals with helping players to stay focused on the present moment and let go of past results.
My belief is that the ability to concentrate in the present and keep focused on the task in hand is very important to achieve peak performance in soccer. When your players are trained to focus on the important cues and disregard information that is less important such as the outcome or results they will play with greater confidence. It is important that when you coach you focus on one play at a time and let go of results. Now, let’s take a closer look at the purpose of mental training and how it will help your players to reach their peak level of performance.
Enhance confidence in players who have self-doubts:
Doubt is the opposite of confidence. If your players maintain many doubts prior to or during their games, this indicates low self-confidence or at least that they are sabotaging what confidence they had at the start of the game. Confidence is what I like to call a core mental game skill because of its importance and relationship with other mental skills.
Develop coping skills to deal with setbacks and mistakes:
Emotional control is a requirement to get into the zone. Some players on your team may have very high and strict expectations of themselves. It is important as the head coach to address these expectations and to help your players to stay composed when under pressure and when they commit mistakes or become frustrated.
Helps teams to develop communication skills and team cohesion:
A major part of soccer performance and mental training is helping teams to improve cohesion and communication. The more a team works as a unit, the better the results for all involved.
Most players are highly committed to excellence and seeing how far they can go in the sport. They love competition and testing themselves against other players. As the coach we have to help them to understand the importance of a positive attitude and mental toughness.
Building high levels of team motivation:
In soccer, motivation is very important because the more motivated your team is the better they will perform each week. Not only does motivation create energy but it also helps with staying more focused and committed to the task in front of you.
When you have a group of players on your team who are all highly motivated to train and play for their coach then they will be more committed to the team. These players will listen to you more and they will want to train with high levels of enthusiasm.
At The Football Domain Academy a way we help to keep our players motivated on game day is each player will receive an audio program that they can listen to on the way to a game. On this recorded audio program players will listen to a 5-10 minute voice recording from their coach breaking down how to prepare both physically and mentally before the game so they can become the most confident player on the field!
By applying mental training into your coaching on a weekly basis you’ll be able to develop mentally tougher players who can play through all barriers, obstacles and won’t give up easily during games.
I want you to check out a resource that has really helped my confidence as a coach called Soccer Coaches University. You will find already done-for-you session plans to SKYROCKET Your Teams’ Passing, Confidence, Accuracy and Pace FAST!
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Talk soon,
Coach Leonardo Capparelli
Educator, Coaches Training Room
p.s… A little about me… I’m from Argentina but raised in the United Kingdom and have been coaching over 10 years now. I am the owner of The Football Domain Academy in London and have a range of qualifications from the English Football Association. My passion is helping and educating coaches on how to build winning team cultures.
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