5 Tips For Parents On Improving Their Athletes Football Performance

As parents, all you want is the best of the best for your kids. This is why you provide every opportunity possible to them so that they can excel in their fields.

And it is indeed a joyous day when you sit in the stands and watch your kid run across the field and score an impossible goal. But then you find yourself wondering, “what is the best way to hone my kids’ skills as a football player?”

The truth is that we all have our kids’ best interests at heart. But somewhere down the road, expectations keep getting higher and higher, and the pressure that we place on our kids’ shoulders keeps getting heavier and heavier.

This is when we end up crushing our kids’ confidence as sports athletes instead of building it up.

Unfortunately, there is no ready-made roadmap to improving an athlete’s football performance. However, there are various changes and habits that you can incorporate in your life to help your kid become the best football player he/she can be.

Throughout my career, I have helped numerous parents reset their thinking patterns, communication patterns, and parenting styles in order to craft their children into better sports athletes.

Parents often tend to fall into the trap of leading their kids down the same path as previous athletes who came before them or listening blindly to their kids’ athletic coaches. This is when they often forget to forge their own paths to increasing their kids’ sports performances.

This is where I come in, as I help you figure out the best parenting path you can take in raising an athletic football player.

#1 Objectively Evaluate Your Kid’s Performance

Your kid may come home at the end of a nerve-wracking and exhausting game only to be bombarded by questions such as “Did you win?”, “Did you score a goal?” or even “How many goals did you score?” These questions are all well and good and might even be encouraging if your kid has actually come back from a victory.

But what if your kid has just returned from a devastating loss? Such questions might end up making them feel even more terrible about their performance, leading to guilt, frustration, and self-pressure.

Instead of asking such competition-based questions, what you can do, as parents, is to evaluate their performance by asking questions objectively:

• “What went well?”
• “Did you have fun?”
• “What improvements do you need to make?”
• “How can you make those improvements?”
• “What were some of the highlights of your performance?”

#2 Relate To Key People

A sport is always a team effort, regardless of whether your kid plays a team sport like football or an individual game like tennis. No matter what sports they are involved in, kids work with their parents, their coach, sports officials, and several others to make the cut.

As a parent, your job will be to maintain healthy relationships with the coach and the sports officials, and other parents whose children are involved in the sports team.

You need to recognize that the goals of each of these people will be different from yours. For instance, the goal of your kids’ coach will be the overall development of the team, while your own goal will be the development of your child.

In such cases, there are bound to be clashes, but healthy and open discussions from your side will be of immense help. After all, everyone involved here, including coaches and sports officials, all want the same thing: the development of your kid, the team, and the sport.

#3 Figure Out Funding

Many sports programs tend to place a substantial financial strain on the parents, but this should not be an obstacle to your kids’ development. Instead of feeling guilty or embarrassed about not being able to afford these programs, you can instead look into scholarship opportunities, state-sponsored programs, support programs, or even sponsors who would be willing to fund your kid through their desired sports activity.

#4 Develop a Parents Code

As parents who want kids to succeed in their chosen paths, we sometimes lose track of ourselves. This is where developing a parent’s code will help.

You can include various ground rules for yourself in this journey of guiding your kid through their sports activities. Some of these ground rules can be:

• I will not have unrealistic expectations.
• I will remember that my kid is not a professional yet, and will therefore not use professional judgment standards.
• I will not ridicule, use bad language or yell at my kid for making a mistake.
• I will respect the decisions of coaches and officials and encourage my kid to do the same.

#5 Shift Your Focus

The day we realize that our kid is a sports protegee is the same day that our minds go into overdrive, and we become obsessed with the idea of “winning” and “losing.”

This mindset, however, might actually be detrimental to your kid. Instead, try to shift your focus towards “learning” and “improving,” and encourage your child to develop the same mindset as well. Praise, appreciation, and positive feedback can go a long way in developing such a mindset.

Conclusion

And there you go! These are the five best tips for a parent’s guide on improving their athletes’ football performance.

Keep in mind that this is a journey that you are undertaking with your kid, and it requires a shift in perspective and bucket-loads of patience and perseverance from both yourself and your kid.

However, my goal for you is to be able to do this in the best and most efficient manner possible.

Remember, this is just the beginning. You have a long road ahead, but my team and I are here to make this an easy and enjoyable journey for you. If you need more expert advice, feel free to reach out to us at our office by calling 239-829-6215.

Our Fort Myers sports performance training programs can help take your football athlete to the next level!