Coaching Soccer: Four Steps to Mental Toughness

Mental toughness is highly accredited to many factors that should be present in an individual– a definite purpose and a clear sense of direction, a high degree of tenacity, emotional placidness, positive outlook, and tons of  energy. Here are four soccer coaching tips that a coach should include in their players' training.

Step One: Increase Strong Self-Identity

Expectations significantly influences results, which is also affected by how a player plays . In a way, positive thinking begets positive results. Developing a state of thinking in which the mind feeds off on recent victories, positive experiences, and rewarding memories is more and more imaginable when circumstances surface and a player takes charge to achieve his desired result. The mind can channel positive thoughts through action and therefore, allowing the player, or any individual for that matter, to produce the positive result.

Step Two: Become and Stay Motivated

Motivation is powerful and the presence or the lack of which dramatically changes a player’s performance. Motivation is what fuels a player’s drive and the lack of it won’t boost or promote mental toughness, which is required if one has to stretch to echelons of elite soccer. Family and friends are basic sources of motivation during a soccer player’s early phase.   When coaching soccer, it is the coaches who give the motivational push. In the end, the player himself must come up with the motivation. At this point, mental toughness is vital . If motivation is sustained later throughout a soccer player’s career, he becomes at war with himself and becomes tougher mentally as he stays to play against his own standards as well as keep in command of his state of mind.

Step Three: Establish a Work Ethic

A player must be self-assured in his skills as well as his physical tools and that he can meet the expectations of this physically tough game. By becoming at ease with his strength, speed, and quickness , as well as his other attributes, the player is not susceptible to self-doubt and anxiety. When all players share the same belief in what they can do and that they commit their skills and other attributes to achieve the common goal, the team, as a single unit, achieves mental toughness.  And mentally tough players are those who recognize opportunities as well as traps. They know when to go for the win and when to pull the stops. They train hard but they also do not forget how to have fun and relax.

Step Four: Develop Self-Control

To be mentally tough forces a player to remain a positive person, particularly when a game is charged with emotions that can become quite hard to suppress and can cause certain distractions that can lead to a player losing composure. When a players is overwhelmed with emotions in a game, they usually respond in four ways:

• The player lowers his or her performance level, including the level of energy and loyalty.

• The player is angered.

• The player’s mental composure is strained that he or she “chokes”.

• The player steps up mentally and faces the challenge at hand.

Players who have gained mental toughness see setbacks essential to every game. For such players, setbacks are viewed as challenges they need to hurdle . Since they can't control everything that happens in the game, they choose to respond to everything that takes place. Criticisms, mistakes, as well as victories help mold the player in more ways than one. In the end, it is how a player deals with the situation to show how mentally tough he is or not.