Help Your Athletes Benefit From Criticism by Coaches

by Justin Sayban

How Athletes Can Deal with Coach Criticism

It can be hard for your young athletes to take criticism productively from coaches. Kids often don’t interpret communication from coaches correctly because of the delivery or the emotion with which the feedback is conveyed.

When their coaches criticize young athletes, the kids may focus on only the negative part of the message, or miss the message entirely.

This is especially true if the criticism is done in an excessively loud manner. Kids can interpret loudness as overly negative.

It may look like this: A coach yells at young soccer players, “What are you doing? You’re moving up too far!”

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