Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

There are three basic steps to help a young athlete who lacks confidence.

Step 1: Assess The Source of their Lack of Confidence

In step one, start by assessing what causes their lack of confidence. You can use these 9 questions below as a starting point:

1. Preparation: Do you lack confidence in your preparation from training and practice?
2. Performance accomplishments: Do you lack confidence due to past failures in achieving goals?
3. Coaching:  Do you lack confidence in your coach having the ability to help you achieve your goals?
4. Innate factors:  Do you lack confidence in the innate abilities and talents you were born with?
5. Social support:  Do you lack confidence in the support you get from family, friends, and teammates?
6. Experience:  Do you lack confidence in your experience and the learned lessons from prior successes or failures?
7. Competitive advantage:  Do you lack confidence in how you compare to your competition?
8. Self-awareness: Do you lack confidence because you are unsure in what you want and how to go after it?
9. Trust:  Do you lack confidence because you don’t trust yourself, your preparation, teammates, or coaching?

Step 2: Focus on Controlling the Controllables

Most things that are a source for lacking confidence, could also be a source for gaining confidence. However, the only way to flip this with intention is to focus on those sources under your control.

So in this step you want to separate out the controllable responses in the assessment from the uncontrollable responses. You are not going to ignore the uncontrollables, they just will not be the focus for this basic process.

The controllable questions come from: preparation, coaching, experience, and self-awareness.

Step 3: Establish Healthy Habits and Routines Around the Controllables

The best thing that can be done to help a young athlete who lacks confidence is to establish healthy habits and routines based on proven patterns of success.

For example, looking at each of the four areas of controllables:

Preparation: If the young athlete lacks confidence in their preparation, then start him or her on a routine similar to one of their role models or successful teammates.

Coaching: If the young athlete lacks confidence in their coaching, it may or may not be possible to find new coaching. However, you may want to find an alternative coach to do private lessons. A coach with a proven track record of working with successful athletes and one who is good at getting buy-in from young athletes.

Experience: If the young athlete lacks confidence in their experience, you may want to try more video review sessions with this athlete after competitions. Sessions that allow them to break down their performance and write down their lessons learned. It also may be necessary for them to either compete more or compete less depending on the specific situation.

Self-awareness: If the young athlete lacks confidence as a result of self-awareness, then I would suggest trying the virtual coaching program I describe here. This program is specifically designed to help young athletes in 4th grade through high school know what they want and create a plan to go after it. If you are interested in finding out more about this coaching program, contact me here.