How to Handle the Pressures of Soccer Tryouts

If you are a soccer player, it’s more than likely you’ve been through a high-pressure soccer tryout or two. The experience of handling the pressure of tryouts connects socceristas of all ages, levels of play, and geographic locations.

So, how do you handle the pressure of tryouts? How do you go about feeling calm, composed, and confident? How do you play your best soccer while not folding under performance pressure? 

Be as physically prepared as you can

Preparedness breeds confidence. Meaning that the more prepared you are, the more you will have faith in your ability to perform.

The best advice for handling the pressure of soccer tryouts is to prepare adequately. Not only will physically pushing yourself help you feel calmer (because that’s what exercise and activity do) but working hard will also help you improve your skill and boost your belief in yourself.

Depending on your level of play, there are many different ways to prepare yourself for tryouts. The things that will be universally beneficial to socceristas are fitness and speed training, individual technical training, and tactical knowledge and game awareness.

Be very intentional with your mindset and self-talk

The biggest mistake socceristas can make heading into tryouts is overly focusing on unhelpful things.

Believe it or not, you get to choose what you think about. But, if you don’t step up and consciously do it, your mind will take over and send you down a rabbit hole of negative, self-defeating thoughts. 

If you are looking to stand out at soccer tryouts but are feeling a lot of pressure in the time leading up to the tryout, make sure that you are preparing by filling your head with good, useful, and constructive thoughts. You can do this by being very aware of your self-talk and the messages you are telling yourself.

This can be hard to do since, half the time, we don’t even notice what we are doing to ourselves, and we quickly become our own worst enemy on the soccer field.

Try to increase your self-awareness of your thoughts and then build yourself up by repeating positive, encouraging messages to yourself. Do this by reminding yourself of the things you do well; remind yourself that you are prepared and ready.

Focus on the present moment and on things you can control

At soccer tryouts, it’s easy to get swept up in the results-based expectations that you have of yourself. Examples include telling yourself that you need to make the team, score X number of goals, or that you better not make any mistakes.

When you do this, you create additional anxiety and pressure to perform on top of what already exists. And these thoughts take your attention away from the present moment, which makes it even more likely that you’ll make mistakes and not perform to the best of your ability.

To reduce the pressure of tryouts, try to focus on process goals–aka controllable objectives. Controllable objectives are manageable and specific actions that are absolutely 100% possible for you to achieve–whether or not they happen is entirely up to you.

It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing; these are things you can control. Here are some examples: pressuring quickly, making runs into space, playing with intensity, being on your toes and ready to move, scanning the field, having urgency to recover, etc.

Focus on these things rather than focusing on ‘making the team,’ and you’ll be more present, you’ll play better, and you’ll feel more confident and in control.

Use breathwork to calm yourself and regain focus

Lastly, one of the best pieces of advice for soccer tryouts is to use breathwork to stay composed and concentrated on the task at hand.

Breathwork helps you regain focus and keeps your mind in the present moment by tapping into a space where you are taking control of something that usually operates on its own without your intervention. This gives you a sense of control over the situation.

Box breathing is a common method used amongst athletes (four-count breath in, four-count hold, four-count exhale, four-count hold) or simply one big inhale followed by one big exhale works great.

Deep breathing like this calms your nerves and reduces stress and anxiety. In addition, it allows you to reset your thoughts, remind yourself that you are prepared and ready, and focus on your controllable objectives and the present moment.

The pressure of soccer tryouts can be hard to handle, yes. But try these tips and pieces of advice, and you’ll be much more prepared to play with confidence and composure at tryouts. You got this!

Featured image via Adobe Stock Images

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