6 steps to developing confident athletes

Step 1 – Demonstrate Effectively: When demonstrating skills to young players it is not just about talking. As a coach you must think about how you can keep athletes motivated and focused. To learn skills and perform it successful players have to practice it so it becomes stored in their memory.

Step 2 – Help athletes to manage their emotions. By experiencing positive emotional states you are more likely to increase confidence. As a coach think how you can help athletes to experience more positive emotional states. Do you set fun and enjoyable training sessions? Do you create a positive environment for your athletes?

Step 3 – Verbal Persuasion – Young athletes rely heavily on adult feedback and it is important that the feedback which we provide is positive and constructional. As a coach start to praise the effort of your players. Start to make players realise the importance of learning and hard work.

Step 4 – Success vs Failure – Successful experiences in sport can help to increase an athlete’s confidence. As a coach how can you influence this? Do you set really challenging sessions where athletes aren’t experiencing success? We want players to experience success but that does not mean that you can’t set a challenging session where players fail. It is important to teach players to learn from failure.

Step 5 – it is natural for every athlete to become nervous before a competition or match. The important part is how athletes deal with their physiological arousal. Anxiety and nerves are a way of our mind and body preparing us for competition. Try and help athletes to view physiological arousal as facilitative to their performance.

Step 6 – Goals are a simple tool which can help athletes to feel more confident. Why not try and set 3 goals for your athletes to achieve in each training or game?