In this article, I will introduce you to 3 golden rules that will help you become the best soccer player you can be.
1. Think about your football in a useful and positive way
What you think about your football on a day-to-day basis determines how you feel about your football in general, and how you feel about your football greatly influences how quickly you learn in training and how well you perform. On match day.
I spend many hours each week teaching Premiership footballers how to think effectively after training and before game day. Here is a technique you can use:
I want you to write your top three games. Write them down in detail as we have discussed before. This will give you something to come back to every day that will help you build and maintain a strong football image. It will help you take control of the memories you have of your football.
When writing your top three games, remember the key moments. Key moments like runs you made, tackles, blocks, passes and headers you earned. Add sentiments to your story: “I felt strong, confident, and powerful” and “I felt invincible.”
These are exciting images to remember and reinforce. If your friends or loved ones were watching you, what do you think they would have seen? Also write your point of view.
When you spend time off the court reminding yourself of the moments when you performed your best, you feed your brain and body with safe imagery and imagery. The footballer who commits to this technique on a daily basis will build self-confidence and feel great going into their training session and matches, giving them a better chance to learn faster and play better with more consistency.
2. Practice with purpose
It’s nice to have a lot of soccer skills, but no matter how talented you are, it’s the quality of your training that determines your soccer trajectory. In fact, this is so important that I advise clients to stop using the word training and start calling it practice. And ‘any old practice’ is not enough: what is important is deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice is not easy and it starts in the brain. He is not a footballer doing an hour of training, doing a bit of futsal and having fun with his teammates. He is mentally and physically exhausting. It’s a focused, repetitive type of practice where you’re always monitoring your performance, correcting, experimenting, listening to immediate and constant feedback, and always pushing beyond what you’ve already accomplished.
The next time you go to practice, be sure to set yourself a goal, preferably a specific area that you would like to improve. Focus completely and get out of your comfort zone by trying things that are not easy for you on the field.
3. Control the controllables
The biggest killer in soccer is distraction. Taking your mind off the game can have dangerous consequences. A correct approach to attention in soccer starts with understanding what you can and cannot control. There are many things in soccer that you cannot control and if you focus on them, you can easily get distracted while playing.
The most obvious are the weather and the state of the course. It is quite obvious that you cannot control those aspects. And yet, how many footballers pay attention to them? Many times I’ve walked onto a field with the team before a game and heard someone say, “I can’t believe how bad the field is. How can we play well on this?” Where do you think the performance of this footballer will focus during the match? Do you think he could be easily distracted?
Similar to the state of the field, I have heard footballers complain about the weather. Last season, a player came up to me on Thursday and told me that he hoped it wouldn’t rain during Saturday’s game because he decided it was rubbish when he played in the rain. I, of course, pointed out that if he wanted a professional football career in England, he would probably have to get used to playing in the rain (it rains a lot in England!). Jokes aside, do you think this player’s thinking going into the game was helpful? His focus performance would inevitably be damaged if it rained on him, something he couldn’t control.
Before the next time you play, write down some of the things you can control, such as your ‘body language’ and ‘how confidently you play the role’, and try to focus on them. Avoid focusing your attention on things you cannot control; they will only divert your mind from what is important during the game.
Of course, there’s more to getting the mental side of acting right, but these three rules represent an excellent foundation. They will help you get on the path to becoming the best soccer player or soccer player you can be!