Coaching High School Soccer: 5 Action Ideas
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 explains what you want of people in such a way that allows them to perform it.
In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Then also they have to face a number of issues while coaching young players. These issues come up due to the inability to communicate properly. Your role as a coach would become far easier if you just pay attention to some most important communication issues.
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. They tend to overlook some chief points that could help the team improve on certain fronts. As such they lose the focus on directing the team towards a win by way of an effective conversation.
Though the coaches today are complete professionals fully acquainted with the game, they lack communication training. For example; use of flip charts and videos in soccer coaching is not applied by many coaches as they aren’t aware of them. The daily practice gets monotonous when there are communication gaps even though the coach may be technically very sound.
In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been working on these drills for some time but the standards are different. You can do away with the monotony of repetitive messages by frequently changing the layout of training.
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 example; Sending out instructions without taking the player’s name leads to uncertainty and confusion.
Some guiding principles for coaches in football coaching are given below:
• Every message from the coach is equally important. So make sure that they are interpreted correctly.
• Your messages should have a positive impact on the players to put their best foot forward. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.
• 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. When it comes to coaching high school soccer, tilt the balance slightly more towards praise.
Accept as true. Application of these simple strategies to your training programs will have far reaching results for your team.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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: soccer coaching
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