How To Develop Competitiveness

Mindset

“Never say never because limits, like fears, are often just illusions,” Michael Jordan, former NBA superstar.

To develop competitiveness, it is not the games or the exercises that are the most important thing, but more your coaching insights. Knowing how to bring your core values to life is critical to building mental strength for your players to compete. Mental strength is a key part of your players’ talent and their performance.

Agony of Defeat

Defeats are always difficult to forget. When I was the varsity coach at The Ursuline School games against Scarsdale High School were always big. They were our main rival.

One game at their field we were up 0 – 2 and looking good to notch an important victory. They got back into the game with soft shot that crept under our goalie. I was livid at that moment. I ripped into our goalie at half time, questioning her competitive spirit.

They tied up the score and went on to win 3 – 2. I was boiling by the end. I remember they had an injury during the game, that looked serious, and I was reluctant to go check on their player. At our next practice, I was frustrated with the team and let them know how they lacked competitiveness.

On reflection, I realized I did the same training that focused on hard skills to improve their competitiveness for the next game.

Lighting A Fire…

How often have you gotten into the face of your players and questioned their passion to compete?

You are probably more guilty when they have lost a game. In the end, you punish them with physically demanding exercises. In worst cases, this may occur the day after the game.

Are you making your players more competitive?

When you get in their faces are they going to learn to improve their combativeness, resiliency, desire to beat one’s opponent? On the other hand, if your players had that competitive mental strength, the desire to overcome adversity you would be improving performance.

To improve your player’s competitiveness you need to improve their soft skills, not the hard skills.

How To Improve Competitiveness

Improving competitiveness can be achieved by creating an environment where your players ‘live’ and practice to improve their soft skills. Soft skills can be improved through training sessions.

1. Soft Skills
   Establish what are the soft skills (core values) that your team needs to improve so they become more competitive.
   
   Soft skills represent various areas of mental strength. For example, competitiveness can be group as follows – resiliency, combativeness, courage, trust, and risk-taking.
   
   For this blog, the focus will be – How to Improve Resiliency
   
2. Session Plan
   You can improve your players’ soft skills, through training games.
   
   You can use games of 4v4…6v6 with modifications (floating players, restricted touches, unbalanced teams, etc). to provide countless challenges.
   
   To improve resiliency you can use a 5 versus 4 small-sided game. Use games with unbalanced teams.
   
   From this design you should experience the immediate response from the team playing number down of – ‘this is not fair,’ ‘they have more players than us.’
   
   
3. Coaching In The Game
   Your coaching should be primarily aimed at the team playing with numbers down. Key moments when you should offer positive coaching are moments of unsuccessful actions and low motivation.
   
   
4. Reflection
   At the end of the session, you discuss with your team how the team with ‘numbers down’ reacted. Discuss the pros and cons of their behavior.
   
   Following their feedback, you need to ask what do they think was the objective of the session. This provides the opportunity to explain resiliency and its value for them and the team.

The games or the training exercises are not the most important to develop competitiveness.

What is vital is your ability to focus on a specific mental skill. Then you need to plan a training session that demands the use of that soft skill. Have your players reflect on their behavior and your coaching. This provides the opportunity for your players to actual ‘live’ demands through training and games.

References

Bradbury, Tim. ‘Why Culture’ Webinar. June 2020

FIFA Ed. & Tech. Development Dept. Youth Football Manual. Mental Strength. pp 164 – 170.