You might disagree, but hear me out on this when I say that in coaching high school soccer, communication is the first step to success. The art of communicating to the team is what coaching truly is. 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. Even then they have to deal with many issues in coaching young players. Most of these issues are a result of lack of communication. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.
These have been described one by one.
Emotions of the coaches take over their minds while they are watching their kids play on field. They forget that they have the duty to observe the players analytically rather than merely watching them play. They tend to overlook some chief points that could help the team improve on certain fronts. The coaches fail to have an effective conversation that could help the players get to the winning post.
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. When the coach finds it difficult to communicate his messages clearly, it brings monotony to the game even if he has a complete knowledge of the game.
This is especially important in coaching high school soccer since the players have been into the sport for quite some time. 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.
In football coaching, there are some points that need special attention and they are as follows:
• Every message from the coach is equally important. So make sure that they are interpreted correctly.
• Your language should be positive enough to push the players to try hard to perform well. Allow them to grow and become better players instead of highlighting their flaws.
• 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!).
• Adopt a proactive approach to identify the impending problems and solve them.
• Accentuate your player’s self worth by balancing praise with criticism. In coaching high school soccer, the balance should be a bit more towards the 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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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.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching