Your Youth Athlete Doesn’t Need A Mental Coach

This is for the parents thinking about purchasing a course or hiring a coach for their child’s “mental” game. If you child is playing youth sports and under the age of 16 – you are about to waste a shit ton of money.

Mental game is important and mental coaches can give an edge to players at higher levels. Most of the mental work being done is reversing the bad mental habits learned over time. This calls for the work of a professional.

However, at the youth level, parents and coaches have more influence over the mindset of the player because they haven’t developed habits yet. There is no need to hire an expert or a psychologists. Focus on these 4 elements with your athletes/children to start them on the right track to building confidence and mental strength:

Confidence to perform

Confidence is a selling point for the “mental” game. Lack of confidence is a direct result of not being prepared for the moment or inexperience in that specific moment.

Start with being prepared. A child walking up to the plate for an at-bat who has been practicing in the back yard is going to have confidence that they can get a hit. A child stepping in without swinging a bat before is going to be less confident: So step 1, make sure your child is prepared for the moment by practicing at home.

Next is experience – all the prep in the world is not going to get you there. Being successful in situations are going to build confidence that success can happen again. It also helps with failing because you learn to deal with what happens and make adjustments for next time.

Preparation and experience are two key components to confidence. Build up both and you have majority of the mental coaching for youth.

Dealing with outside pressure

Outside influences plays a big part in our mental state. Fills the head with noise of what will happen if I do not hit the shot or make the save. The coach is going to bench me – fans boo – I am going to look stupid in front of all these people. Parents are a huge place of pressure on youth athletes. I remember not playing well and be thinking on the bench that the ride home was going to be awful. The whole game was focused on not making a mistake, which inevitably leads to making a mistake.

Put things into perspective. Stay focused on what the goals of youth sports are – having fun, building confidence and learning the game.

Be the release valve for your child. And if the current team is a toxic one with bag skating 8 year olds after a loss – time to find a new team.

Embracing failure

MLB all stars have a batting average of around .300. Which means they strike out or fail at the plate on average 70-75% of the time. The best shooters in the NHL have a shooting percentage of 12%. What’s the point? Players are going to fail and fail often, but they have to get back in there. If you stop shooting because you haven’t scored in 3 games your never going to score. The only solution is to shoot more.

Work with your kids on learning from a situation and moving on to the next opportunity. Keep on doing the right things, keep trying and success will come.

Staying positive

Above all else, staying positive is fool proof way to keep the mental game on point. The minute the mind turns into “I can’t” or “this sucks” is the moment of failure. Positive mindset gives players the confidence to get back in there. And once again, children learn this from adults. From parents. Keep the conversations with children positive. “You did this well, we can improve on this, focus on that and you will be ready for next time.” Not “you sucked today, how could you play like that, you will never make it, I am wasting my money, you should just quit.

The bottom line is youth sports should be fun. If our children are so stressed out they can’t swing a bat on a Saturday for an hour, then we have a bigger problem.