Youth sports psychology articles and strategies for sports parents of young athletes to improve mental game and performance.
Kids Who Compare Their Skills to Others This holiday season, it’s a great idea to teach sports kids to focus on what they have to be thankful for–their positive experiences, physical assets, and mental game strengths, to name just a few. While they’re doing this, they need to understand that … Read Sport Psychology Tip
What Should Sports Parents Do About Bullying? When a 15-year-old soccer player is verbally humiliated by a coach in front of his peers during a soccer tournament, and then decides to pack up and leave the tournament, what should other parents do? A sports mom wrote us recently to say … Read Sport Psychology Tip
Tips To Help Sports Kids in Games In many ways, it makes sense that we often see mayhem on the sidelines during youth sporting events, says Brian Swarz, a coach, ref and umpire who has seen a lot of youth sports games. First of all, many of the coaches are … Read Sport Psychology Tip
The Importance of Mental Training Steve Siebold is a former top 500 tennis player who knows what it’s like to be under pressure as a sports kid. He also knows how much that pressure can affect kids throughout their lives—in a negative way. “Some of the best tennis players in … Read Sport Psychology Tip
What’s One of the Biggest Confidence Killers for Sports Kids? Beliefs they hold to that undermine their confidence. They include: Maybe your young athletes don’t wear polka-dotted underwear. But we bet your sports kids have displayed some, if not all, of these tendencies from time-to-time. If they haven’t, they’re not … Read Sport Psychology Tip
High Expectations Verse High Confidence No matter what sport you play, if you focus too much on outcome expectations, your confidence will take a hit. I call this the confidence-expectation connection. Here’s the connection: When your expectations are super high—and you fail to achieve those expectations—confidence takes a hit. Here’s … Read Sport Psychology Tip