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 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.
Speaking of soccer coaching, almost all the coaches are the former players who decide to take on as coaches. Even then they have to deal with many issues in coaching young players. The reason why many of these issues show up is the coach’s inability to communicate. Your role as a coach would become far easier if you just pay attention to some most important communication issues.
These have been described one by one.
Emotions of the coaches take over their minds while they are watching their kids play on field. 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. They therefore lose the opportunity to have an objective conversation aimed at winning the game.
Although coaches have a complete knowledge of the game, but they have a little training in communication. For example; in soccer coaching, many coaches are not aware of the utility of a flip chart or a video. 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.
In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been executing soccer drills for a long time at different levels. And one of the ways to avoid the boredom of repeating important messages is to keep varying the format.
It’s a fact that sometimes the coaches completely forget that it is people who perform in the practice sessions. 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.
There are certain guiding principles in football coaching which are as follows:
• All messages from the coach are important for players. They should therefore be taken and read correctly.
• Your language should be positive enough to push the players to try hard to perform well. Challenge them to be better rather than punishing them for being poor.
• Make sure you spend quality time with all your players. It has come to light through various studies that coaches spend much more time with their top players (up to seven times more!).
• Be proactive in communicating the problem the moment you see it coming.
• Reinforce the player’s self esteem by balancing praise with criticism. In coaching high school soccer, the balance should be a bit more towards the praise.
Believe me. Once you start to apply this in your training programs, the benefits will far exceed your expectations.
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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