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 lets you speak to mind in the simplest way and allow the other to do the activity in exactly the same way.
Majority of coaches in soccer coaching are the players who used to play the game in their younger days. Still, there are several problems that they have to find solutions to. These issues come up due to the inability to communicate properly. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.
These are described for you one at a time.
When coaches watch their kids playing, they tend to become emotional. The coaches become spectators instead of adopting a critical approach to observing the kids. As such they are not able to see the key points that could make all the difference in their team’s performance. The coaches fail to have an effective conversation that could help the players get to the winning post.
Although coaches have a complete knowledge of the game, but they have a little training in communication. 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.
This occupies greater importance in coaching high school soccer as the players are young but also know the various facets of the game. They have been performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.
You’ll be amazed to know that coaches tend to forget sometimes that it is people who carry out the trainings. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. When a coach tries to instruct something to the play but does not use that player’s name, it creates confusion and is an apt example of bad communication.
Some guidelines meant for coaches in football coaching include the following:
• All messages that come from the coach are very important. So it’s necessary that they are deduced 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 indicates that coaches spend a lot more time (up to seven times more!) with star players.
• 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.
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