Mental Skills for Soccer Players to Perform Under Pressure

In this video, I will give 10 mental skills for soccer players to perform under pressure. If you would like to improve your ability to perform under pressure, it is important to first understand the mental process of performing a movement. In this video I am going to explain how your brain works when playing sports, then I’ll explain why we choke under pressure, and I will end the video with 10 strategies that professional athletes and sport psychologists use to perform under pressure. According to research, a part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex becomes activated when we are learning a new skill or movement. Once we practice a movement to the point in which we are able to perform it automatically and without our conscious attention, a different part of the brain called the cortex-basal ganglia-thalamus loop becomes activated when performing the movement. Essentially, once we have practiced a skill to mastery, the muscle activation sequence becomes very efficient. When a skill becomes so efficient and automatic that we no longer have to direct our conscious attention to the movement, so instead of using our prefrontal cortex we use the cortex loop. The reason we choke is because in high pressure situations we often try to control our performance and force a good outcome. This increased control can backfire because bringing our conscious awareness to skills that normally operate outside our prefrontal cortex can disrupt the movement. Instead of using the cortex loop to perform the movement, we revert back to our beginner strategy of using the prefrontal cortex and consciously directing our limbs to perform the movement. The result is that movements that run best largely outside of our conscious awareness receive our conscious attention and disrupt our automatic fluid movement. So what can we do about this? The goal is to allow our movements to flow automatically outside of our conscious awareness during high pressure situations. This ability can be developed by practicing the strategies mentioned in the second half of the video. Thanks for watching! Like, comment and subscribe if you enjoyed the video :) Background Music Source: Better Days - soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/

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