“Football is so much about mental toughness, digging deep; doing whatever you need to do to help the team win”. Tom Brady

The use of football mental toughness during practice helps increase your ability to reach peak performances all season.

Mental Game Coaching strives to remove uninspiring attitudes and beliefs, replacing them with motivated ones in order to achieve optimum performance in football.

The goal of Mental Game Coaching is to help athletes and teams overcome negative mindsets and beliefs and use mental skills training strategies to perform well during the games.

Developing a strong football mind needs a lot of training and exercise.

Football psychology teaches effective mental skills to athletes and coaches to improve performance and consistency in the game of football.

The role of a Mental Game Coach

A Mental Game Coach is one who primarily teaches athletes mental skills and how to apply it to their game in order to improve their performance.

The role of a Mental Game Coach is to make possible the right atmosphere for learning to occur and to motivate the athletes.

There are situations where by a football player gets angry, frustrated and hence cannot deliver a good performance during the game.

There are also situations where an athlete’s drive, focus, self-belief, resilience, and winning mentality made the difference.

The essence of psychology in football is to remind players that they need to be focused; set goals, driven and must always approach all games with a winning mentality.

The role of a Mental Game Coach is importance. They include the following responsibilities.
• A Mental Game Coach helps football players to overcome performance fears such as failure and anxiety.
• They teach mental skills that will help the players improve their confidence, focus, and performance.
• A Mental Game Coach makes sure that players are mentally prepared for competition.
• They help athletes heal mental scars after a long injury break.
• They help athletes improve the quality of their practice.

How a Mental Game Coach can improve the performance of players and teams

Football players are not born ‘mentally tough’ but they can be taught.

Mental skills can be can be learned, and with practice, it can improve your game.

The ability to set goals, remain focused, make decisions, maintain your self-belief and confidence, control your emotions and read people under pressure consistently are the essential qualities a coach needs to infuse into the team.

Football psychologists/Mental Game Coaches observe football players who give their best performance even when under pressure, and those who cannot.

Finding the right athletes, who give optimal performance no matter the issues they face and having players who have been instilled with football mental toughness reduce the chance of failures.

The best coaches prepare their team mentally by creating in game situations during training so that familiar game situations can be tackled with easily.

Performances of previous games should be technically analyzed so that the players can learn from it and can react to it positively next time, hence improving the chances for a better performance.

• Download the free mental game assessment and get started on Improving your Mental Game in Football.