Coaches Clinic Notes
Conducted by Bruce Stapleton

Coaches Guide to Mental Conditioning in Soccer

Facts:

  • You need to build mental conditioning practices and strategies into your regular practice routines at an early age (8-10 years old)
  • Provide examples and strategy for coping and remaining mentally alert – yelling at the kids to "relax" only creates more anxiety
  • Coach the process, not the outcome – focus on what they need to do to win not on winning – focusing on winning ensures that their play will be tight and tentative
  • Mental conditioning include three key components – 1) mental strategy and scenario aptitude, 2) emotional toughness and 3) mind/body coordination
  • Role playing game situations, creating practice pressure situations and rehearsing all are important in improving the mental conditioning of your athletes
  • Mental conditioning must be apart of your overall conditioning program because focus and concentration are learned and practiced skills

Integrating Mental Conditioning into Practice Sessions

  • Mental strategy – constantly review strategies of the game and outcomes of performing as a team. Provide immediate feedback on plays executed poorly and those performed extremely well. Actions taken in a game situation must become natural and instinctive. Create game scenarios and practice step-by-step how a play should be executed. Identify contingency and options to broken plays. Continually quiz players on if – then actions. For example, if this is the situation what are three possible things you would do?
  • Emotional and mental toughness – get the players focus on the correct things – process, execution and concentration. Most stress related performance problems are a direct result of faulty concentration. Build rituals into practice and pre-game activities to minimize outside distractions and maintain familiar routine before every performance. Practice visualization – it has been proven that what you believe is what you do. Create a positive, free to fail, atmosphere to promote encouragement and learning from mistakes. If you can teach your players to become oblivious to failure and mistakes (they learn from mistakes and useful on how to improve), then they will perform well for you. REMEMBER: keep expectations age specific.
  • Mind/Body Coordination – Practice, Practice, Practice fundamentals of balance and motor control, coordination, and spatial perception. Primary activities should include jump roping, unilateral movements, practicing drills with eyes closed, landing properly, etc.

Developing Self-esteem

  1. Challenge your athletes – don’t threaten them. This is critical for young athletes so you keep them motivated, improving and excited about the sport. Most adolescent burnout is due to the frustration, pressure and fear of having to be perfect or else …
  2. Treat each athlete with respect and understand their differences - kids between the ages of 10 and 14 mature at different rates. Do not negate the fact that a 12 year old that is underdeveloped physically, emotionally or mentally will not be a good player in the next 2 years. Only a small percentage of elite players at the age of 19 were good players in their earlier years.
  3. Set clear expectations and reward achievement - Put your athletes in control of their destiny. Establish age appropriate expectations and reward them when they are met. This does not include winning games. Set goals for practices, improvement, execution etc.
  4. Teach the benefits of failing – your athletes will never improve if they do not fail. How will they grow and improve if they do not continue to stretch there abilities? Build in intermittent stress – both physical and mental – into every practice. However, be careful, more is not better in this case. Go for small, incremental improvements. Doing to much to fast can be discouraging and provide you with the opposite outcome than you desire.
  5. Set your standards of conduct and sportsmanship and do not deviate – maintain consistency in your coaching and behavior control. Stay positive. Do not allow any athlete or his/her teammates to put themselves or anyone else down.
  6. Teach and be empathic – what’s simple for you is complex and complicated for a child. Don’t rush through explanations. Make sure they understand and can execute. Keep instructions and difficulty to age and skill appropriate levels.

The Bottom Line

  • By incorporating mental conditioning practices into your daily practice schedules you will achieve greater results and happier athletes
  • You must practice and train the mental aspects and techniques just like you practice skills and spend time on physical conditioning
  • Keeping your athletes focused on the right things – process, execution and concentration -- provides the greatest benefits
  • At the elite sports levels, mental conditioning plays a more important role to overall success than physical.

References:

  1. Goldberg, Alan, Competitive Advantage, Reedswain, Inc. ,1997
  2. Harvey, John, Total Relaxation, 1998
  3. Earle, Richard, "Reduce your Body Age," 1998
 		  

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