August 21st, 2008
Your sports kids may show a fair amount of talent, but are seemingly not interested in meeting their potential. Many sports parents want to know how to motivate their kids, yet not pressure them.
You’re unsure how much time you should spend reminding your kids that they need to attend practice. You feel like you’re nagging.
What’s the answer? How do you get them excited about playing sports?
How do you motivate talented kids who feel as if their coaches don’t appreciate what they have to contribute?
These are all great questions–and ones we receive often from sports parents.
Parents should be concerned about their kids’ motivation in sports. Motivation is one of the keys to success in any endeavor. Athletes can have all the physical talent in the world, but if they can’t act on it with enthusiasm, commitment and dedication, they won’t realize their full potential.
You can learn how to improve your sports kids’ motivation–without burdening them with pressure or high expectations! Sound impossible? Read on!
We’ve just completed a brand new e-book, “How to Motivate Young Athletes,” that tells you just how to do this. More on that later.
First of all, you may not know what motivation looks like in a young athlete. These sports kids love to practice and compete. They get a kick out of working on their weaknesses.
Motivated kids get fired up about competition and expect a lot from themselves. They’re dedicated, committed and want to compete. What’s more, when things get tough, they keep on trying.
Our top tips for raising motivated athletes are all about understanding why kids play sports to begin with–and finding the right sports team that meets these desires.
For example, some kids are natural competitors. You need to ensure they are in a situation that allows them to compete. These kids will get bored if all they do is drills and work on technique.
Other kids play sports to socialize. They need to have fun with their friends.
Some kids simply love to learn. They need coaches who are focused on helping them improve.
Other athletes enjoy the feeling of “flow” they get while playing sports. They like the sense of being totally immersed and “on.” Coaches who challenge kids and help them achieve their potential will allow these athletes to find that feeling of “flow.”
Our new ebook covers these tips–and many more. You have to be a member of Kids Sports Psychology to get our new e-book.
If you join kidssportspsychology.com, not only will you receive our new e-book about how to motivate young athletes, you’ll have access to many others, including:
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Ten Ways of Thinking That Hurt Kids’ Confidence
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Teaching Athletes to Get in the Flow of Sports
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How Young Athletes Can Think and Perform Like Pros by Using “Get Ready” Routines
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Mental Imagery: Using Your Imagination in Your “Get Ready” Routine
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Focus to The Max! How to Focus in Ways that Get You “In the Zone” and Improve Your Performance
Again, to learn more about our Kids’ Sports Psychology e-books written specifically for young athletes visit:
Kids Sports Psychology Age-Specific E-books
Thanks,
Patrick Cohn & Lisa Cohn
p.s. At Kids Sports Psychology, you can also download our popular program, “Parents’ Top Dilemma” program to help sports kids kick perfectionism and fear of failure. You can read more about the Kick Perfectionism Program here:
Parents’ Top Dilemma: Helping Young Athletes Kick Perfectionism and Fear of Failure
Kids’ Sports Psychology members can login here to download the new e-book on motivation:
How to Motivate Young Athletes
Posted in pressure in sports, sports parenting, youth sports psychology | No Comments »
July 24th, 2008
Sports - at any level - is a game of confidence. Kids who have tons of confidence usually will rise above the competition.
Under pressure, these kids’ performance will thrive because of their strong belief in their ability.
We receive many emails from concerned sports parents stating that their kids struggle with confidence and self-doubt…
Parents are concerned that their kids focus too much on the negative, express negative comments about their performance, are generally pessimistic, and disqualify any real positives.
As you might experience with your sports kids, confidence can be fragile or fleeting. If your child has fragile confidence, one mistake (at the start of a game) can pop the thin confidence bubble and lead your kid into the mental shackles of doubt.
What undermines kids’ confidence in sports? Here is our short list:
- Self-doubt about one’s ability
- Self-critical behavior or negative self-talk
- Focusing too much on errors
- High, strict expectations about performance
- The need to be perfect in sports, but can’t
- Making comparisons to other athletes
- Overly critical coaches or parents
- Attributing success to luck and not ability
Another confidence buster for your kids is when they focus too much on the negative and can’t accept positive comments from others. In psychology, they call this “disqualifying the positive” - a so-called cognitive distortion.
Athletes who disqualify the positive perceive good performances as flukes. They hang onto a negative view of the world. They have trouble focusing on what they did well. Have you ever complemented your child on a job well done and your child responds with “I was lucky”?
At KidsSportsPsychology.com, we encourage parents to help kids learn how to accentuate the positive and learn from mistakes…
We want parents and coaches to begin a post-game conversation by making two positive comments about their son’s or daughter’s game. You encourage them to focus on the positive and not mistakes.
Pick out two simple areas you can complement your son or daughter about… For example, “You really hustled on defense today and made some great stops.”
First, you are more likely to get your player’s attention by starting with a couple of positive comments. Second, you teach kids to remember the good plays and not dwell on their mistakes.
Part of human nature is to be self-critical after a game - even when your child performed well. One step in building kids confidence is to help them see through their own self-criticism.
You want kids to appreciate what needs to improve, but not dwell on their shortcomings after a performance.
We have a ton of other confidence-boosting tips for sports kids, parents, and youth coaches waiting for you at Kids Sports Psychology:
Kids Sports Psychology
Thanks,
Patrick J. Cohn
Lisa Cohn
p.s. If you want all our confidence-boosting strategies for sports kids, you should jump over to Kids’ Sports Psychology and take the free tour of our new program to boost young athletes’ mental skills for sports:
Kids Sports Psychology Free Tour
Posted in confidence in young athletes, sports parenting, youth sports psychology | No Comments »
July 10th, 2008
Frustrated parents contact us everyday about helping their kids’ perform better in games. Parents wonder why their kids can’t take practice skills to competition.
We think one reason why athletes don’t perform as well in games as they do in practice is because they lack trust in their skills.
Let us explain…
In some sports, such as skating or gymnastics, athletes spend months training for one major competition during the season. These athletes spend 95% of practice time training their skills.
Young athletes are encouraged to improve technical skills as they learn their sport. They are forced into a “practice mindset” most of the time.
Athletes must improve technique to improve performance. Why is this a problem? Sometimes over-coaching or focusing too much on technique interferes with an athlete’s ability to trust what they learn in competition.
Isn’t dedicated training supposed to be what makes champions?
Yes, but too much training - and not enough playing - makes it difficult to transition into the “performance mindset.”
Here’s another example…
In very technical sports such as golf, perfectionists become enamored with their golf swing or technique. They often lose sight of the real reason they started to train in the first place - so they can perform well on the course.
Perfectionistic golfers spend most of their practice time on the practice tee working to improve mechanics of the swing and very little time playing on the course.
Working on mechanics 95% of the time maybe good for the swing, but is not the ideal for scoring. These golfers look like stars in practice, but under perform on the course.
Please don’t misinterpret us… Improving technique is essential to good performance. But if your kids think too much about “how to” perform in competition, they tend to over analyze, judge
performance, and not play up to their potential.
We just posted a new e-book at Kids’ Sports Psychology to address this very concern - how to help kids transfer their skills to competition.
Our new e-book* is called:
“12 Pregame Tips to Trust What You’ve Learned in Practice”
*What is an e-book? “An e-book (for electronic book: also ebook: also ecobook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal
computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices” (Wikipedia, 2008).
Our new e-book is short, but is packed with powerful tips Dr. Cohn uses to help his students improve trust in their skills and perform better in competition. You also can download and
print out this document for your kids to read.
At Kids’ Sports Psychology, we have several other e-books to improve kids’ mental game. Here are some of the e-books for kids 11 and Older:
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Focus to the Max! How to Focus in Ways that Get You In the
Zone & Improve Your Performance
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How Young Athletes Can Think and Perform Like Pros by Using
“Get Ready” Routines
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Mental Imagery: Using Your Imagination In Your “Get Ready”
Routines
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10 Ways of Thinking That Hurt Kids Confidence
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Six Steps for Helping You Kick Fear of Failure and
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Perfectionism: A Workbook for Sport Kids
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Teaching Athletes to Get in the Flow of Sports
Please visit Kids’ Sports Psychology and to download mental game e-books for young athletes.
Here is a link to read more about the e-books:
Kids Sports Psychology Mental Game E-books
Thanks,
Patrick Cohn & Lisa Cohn
p.s. At Kids Sports Psychology, you can also download our popular program, “Parents’ Top Dilemma” to help sports kids kick perfectionism and fear of failure. You can read more about the Kick Perfectionism Program here:
Parents Top Dilemma: Helping Young Athletes Kick Perfectionism and Fear of Failure
Kids’ Sports Psychology members can login here to download the
new mental game e-book:
Kids Sports Psychology Member Login
Posted in not trusting physical skills, perfectionism in sports, perfectionism is young athletes, youth sports psychology | No Comments »
June 19th, 2008
One important challenge for sports kids today is a phenomenon called social approval. Young athletes often worry too much about what others may or may not be thinking about them.
Young athletes want other to hold them in high esteem: They want to be accepted, respected, or liked by others. To some degree, this is normal.
But when young athletes are too concerned about what others think of their performance, they often find it difficult to perform up to their abilities in competition. They worry, tighten up, and are afraid to let others down.
We think that young athletes rely too much on what they assume others think about them to boost their own self-worth. Athletes often associate self-worth with achievement in sports. They often think that if friends, coaches and family members respect or admire their athletic abilities, they’re better people.
If your sons or daughters buy into this idea, they believe they earn approval and respect points if they perform well in sports (Of course, this belief is not always true.)
Sports parents must understand that a young athlete’s need for approval exerts yet another pressure on the child or teen. Athletes who crave approval from others often become anxious in competition, worrying about failing or becoming embarrassed in public.
Worrying too much about what others think is one of the root causes underlying an athlete’s fear of failure. Athletes are afraid to fail because of the potential for negative public scrutiny by their peers!
We just finished posting another kids’ sports psychology video at our new website for parents and coaches of young athletes.
In the new video presentation, Dr. Cohn discusses four strategies to help sports kids overcome social approval. As a member of Kids’ Sports Psychology, you can watch or download this video along with many others:
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Dr. Cohn’s #1 Formula for Success
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Assessing Your Mental Game
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Pregame Mental Toughness Strategies
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Tips for Practicing Smarter, Not Harder
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How to Erase Your Doubt in Sports
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How to Set Positive Goals
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Enhancing Trust In Yourself
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How To Cope with Mistakes
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How to Boost Self-Confidence
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Improve Your Concentration for Sports!
Here is a page to sample the video presentations:
Sample Sports Psychology Video for Young Athlete
Members can also download e-books specifically written for kids to improve their confidence and success in sports.
Thanks,
Patrick Cohn and Lisa Cohn
p.s. If you are already a member of Kids’ Sports Psychology, please login to watch or download our newest presentation on how to help kids overcome social approval
Tags: sports kids and parents pressure, young athletes pressure
Posted in freezing in competition, pressure from parents, pressure in sports, sports parenting, sports psychology for kids | No Comments »
