Within the squad, we had a range of psychological challenges amongst the players, the majority of which centred around self-belief, self-efficacy and self-confidence. As a coaching team, we felt that these had become a significant, and the main, limiting factor in the performance of individual players and as a collective team.
No matter how hard we worked on the training pitch, we were being restricted from realising our full potential on match days. This began to eat at the motivation of staff and players, and served to erode confidence even further amongst the group as the frustration at being unable to perform to our maximum technical and tactical potential increased.
We began to notice far greater resilience in individual players during difficult moments in games. For the first time, we began to turn games around after initially going behind, and we were much more successful at closing out games in which we were leading. On the training ground, the mood was lighter and players were working harder than ever before, playing with less fear and less concern about making mistakes.
The collective team mentality is now a strength of our team, as opposed to being a weakness of ours which it was previously. The psychological development of our players has also had an overwhelmingly positive impact on our team culture too. More mentally robust players has also allowed our coaches to push, challenge and stretch them further, enhancing their technical and physical development as a result.
It’s a no brainer (no pun intended)!!! Mentality and psychology has the biggest impact on successful athletic performance, so why would you not work on developing this part of your game? And Kate is the perfect person to help - the work she’s done with us has been invaluable and has been the single biggest factor in our recent successes.
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