Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

If an athlete you coach is struggling with confidence right now in this moment there is nothing you can do about it. Confidence in the present moment is a product of the past. Moreover, there is nothing you can do about the past.

Therefore, if an athlete lacks confidence the best thing a coach can do for that athlete is help them create a game plan to improve their confidence in the future. There are four basic steps to do this.

Step 1: Assess the Source of the Athletes Lack of Confidence

In step one, start by assessing what is causing the athlete’s 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 the athlete’s 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

Finally, establish healthy habits and routines based on proven patterns of success for the things under your control.

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

Preparation: If the athlete lacks confidence in their preparation, then find a role model who is successful in the way they want to be successful and help that athlete copy aspects of their preparation routine. If possible, set-up practice sessions that allow the athlete to join or shadow that person in their process of preparing.

Coaching: If the athlete lacks confidence in your coaching, don’t take it personal. Understand why and address specifics, not vague ideas. If necessary, bring in another coach to work one on one with the athlete is the specific areas of concern. Getting the athlete help from another coach with a proven track record of working with someone in the athlete’s situation can be a game changer for confidence.

Experience: If the athlete lacks confidence in their experience, invest time in getting them more experience and doing more video review sessions with them. Break down the video of their performances by writing down the lessons learned and critiquing the good, bad, and ugly.

Self-awareness: If the athlete lacks confidence due to self-awareness, then I suggest you have them take the CliftonStrengths Assessment. Then get them to start a daily routine of journaling about the things they enjoy that use their strengths. Through this process review their journal with them weekly and help them become self-aware of what gives them confidence at a deeper level. As an alternative, you could also hire a coach such as myself to help the athlete through this process of self-discovery. If you are interested in finding out more about how I can help with this, contact me here.

Step 4: Reframing to Address the Non-Controllables

Reframing is the skill of changing one’s perception of a situation so it doesn’t debilitate performance. When an athlete lacks confidence due to one or more things they don’t control then lacking confidence is a matter of perception. Once an athlete changes their perception of a situation, they can change the emotions impeding their confidence.

This is not something most athletes can do alone or even with the help of a coach. Consequently, it’s important to consider getting professional help if you discover an athlete lacks confidence mainly due to things they don’t control.

A coach can only help athletes who are capable of helping themselves. If you believe the athlete is dealing with too many external factors limiting their power to help themself, then I highly recommend you get that athlete help from a professional therapist.