This article is courtesy of Coaches Network

Coaches can often walk a fine line when trying to motivate their young athletes. Choosing the right words to get the most out of your players can be challenging when also trying to instill lessons that go beyond winning and losing. Janis Meredith of CouchUp.com outlines various ways that coaches can inspire their team without creating tension or emotional harm. Specifically, Meredith identifies five phrases that can put undue pressure on young athletes and should therefore be avoided.

1. “This is a MUST win!”

Even if your team is about to compete in a playoff or tournament game, it does not usually help to emphasize that winning is all that matters. Players already understand that it’s an important game that needs to be one if they want to keep playing, reiterating this probably wont help them. There is so much more to be gained from such a competitive game that focusing only on winning can keep your athletes from getting the most out of the experience. “They will play another season, other games, and reminding them that this is a “must-win” will not help them play any better; it will only help them worry all the more about messing up,” writes Meredith.

2. “Watch how (insert name here) does it! You can do it too!”

It makes sense to occasionally use players on your team as examples when trying to teach a certain skill or technique. Yet this type of tactic can also have a negative psychological effect on the other players. Though coaching tactics like this usually come from good intentions, they can easily do more harm than good. Try to avoid comparing players to each other, or singling out a certain person. Instead, motivate the entire team to get better together.

3. “You’re the best player out there! Go show them how it’s done!”

Even if the athlete is the best player on the team, telling them that they need to prove this can put provide unnecessary pressure. Meredith writes, “That mindset may work for older athletes, but for young athletes it is an unnecessary burden to bear.” Keep in mind that it is easy for young athletes to feel overburdened by pressure from their coaches, making it important to avoid singling out specific players. Provide this type of encouragement to the entire team and they will likely share the responsibility together instead of one person feeling like they have to do it all themselves.

4. “Remember what happened last game?”

Most of the time, players remember their mistakes and therefore coaches don’t need to provide constant reminders. Mistakes should be addressed in a way that athletes can learn from them, and one of the main responsibilities of coaches is to help in the learning process. Don’t let your players dwell on their mistakes by reminding them what happened. Instead, give them the knowledge and confidence needed to avoid those mistakes in the future.

5. “Destroy the other team!”

This puts the focus on the opponent instead of the actual performance of your own team. It may just seem like a classic way to motivate your players and get them fired up, but it does nothing to help them visualize succeeding. Encourage your team to play their best, regardless of the opponent. “The object of the game is to win (with integrity) and not to intentionally hurt opponents,” writes Meredith.

Instead of focusing energy towards these last minute motivational speeches, try to just encourage your young athletes to play their best and enjoy the game.

This article was provided by Coaches Network

As a coach, you strive to find the words that will help your athletes reach their full potential—not only as athletes, but as young adults.  In an article in Psychology Today, Meg Selig—author of Changepower! 37 Secrets to Habit Change Success—provides a few brief motivational messages that coaches have used in motivating their athletes to get the most out of their athletic experience.

Do it for love. Selig remembers when well-know figure skating coach Frank Carroll told nervous 18-year-old U.S. skater Gracie Gold the following message when she took the ice for a key performance: “Think about how much you love skating!” And she references a quote from legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson in his book, Eleven Rings: “Focus on something greater than yourself that you love and value, such as your sport or your team.”

Next play. This philosophy is emphasized by Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, who prevents players from dwelling on their mistakes.  Selig cites a description by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who has adopted the “next play” philosophy, based on Coach K’s beliefs: “(Coach K) yells out ‘next play,’ because he doesn’t want the team lingering too long on what just took place. He doesn’t want them celebrating that incredible alley-oop dunk, and he doesn’t want them lamenting the fact that the opposing team just stole the ball and had a fast break that led to an easy layup. You can take a moment to reflect on what just happened, and you probably should, but you shouldn’t linger too long on it, and then move on to the next play.”

Aim for excellence, not perfection. Selig says this is a great motto for an athlete who gets bogged down by never being able to achieve total perfection. Accepting failures and glitches in one’s program is simply part of the process.

Why not you? Why not us? According to Selig, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson always remembered his father’s question to him, “Why not you?” When he encouraged his Seahawks teammates, he transformed the saying into, “Why not us?”

Create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. Selig quotes this statement from Phil Jackson’s Eleven Rings: “I’ve heard echoes of this statement in interviews by Olympians and other successful athletes. Once you’ve prepared mentally and physically for your game, then you are ready to do your best–and your best is the best you can do.”

Cultivate a learning mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Many young athletes believe that it’s talent that counts, says Selig, and as a result, they don’t put in the hard work needed to overcome deficiencies, hone a skill to excellence, or develop the mental strength and flexibility to bounce back from failure.  For these athletes, Selig encourages that the coach rewards effort rather than talent and reframe failure as an opportunity to learn.

Use setbacks as motivation. Can athletes use their failures as a springboard to success? Selig writes, “If you read the sports page, you’ll find that almost every sports team uses a significant loss to motivate themselves to improve in the coming year.”

Keep your self-talk encouraging. Selig emphasizes that positive self-talk must be geared to the athlete’s own and she offers these phrases as mantras for athletes to say to themselves: “I’ve done it before; I can do it again, “or “I’m going to trust myself,” or “Whatever happens, I’ll do my best.”

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Joe Tauer, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at the University of St. Thomas, has a doctorate in psychology and teaches the subject as a tenured professor at the school. So it’s not surprising that he’s regularly asked how he uses that to motivates his players. What is unexpected, however, is his response.

“The short answer is, I don’t,” says Tauer, who became Head Coach at St. Thomas in 2010 after 11 years as an assistant there. “I say that half tongue-in-cheek, but a big part of my approach is to bring in players who are intrinsically motivated, which means they have a built-in desire to take part in an activity for its own sake. My assistants and I tell our players, ‘We’re not going to try to convince you every day to work hard. You either decide to work hard, and we will push you and help you improve, or we’re going to put our efforts into somebody who wants to get better.”

“That doesn’t mean we don’t talk about motivation,” he continues. “But if I have a bunch of players who are only externally motivated, we’re going to struggle, regardless of the degree I have.”

St. Thomas has obviously found those intrinsically motivated players. The team has posted a 98-19 record in Tauer’s four seasons as head coach, winning four conference titles, and reaching the NCAA Division III semifinals in 2013.

So what is the long answer to how he motivates his players? “One of the greatest motivators is hope,” he explains. “Whenever someone feels hopeful, they’re optimistic, energized, and inspired. That’s when you see people do things beyond what they’ve ever done before. With our team, we try to create a vision for what players can be, both individually and collectively, that will give each of them something to strive for.”

Tauer says his philosophy on building that vision comes down to two key team-wide concepts. “The first is, ‘Dare to be Great,’” he says. “Second, we emphasize sustained and consistent excellence, as expressed by the quote attributed to Aristotle, ‘Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit.’ Those two quotes provide a vision to our players of what we want for them every day—not only on the court, but also off the court and in their lives after they leave here.”

While establishing a shared vision is critical, Tauer says coaches also need to learn what makes each player tick. “Everybody marches to the beat of their own drum, and we have to know our players well enough to understand the beat they’re marching to,” he says. “We don’t have to agree with it. We don’t have to change it. But if we don’t understand it, we won’t know why they act the way they do.”

This is a challenge when each athlete may be motivated differently. “For example, in my first year as an assistant, I was handling the defense, and we had a talented player who never worked hard on that end of the floor,” Tauer says. “Every day I was on him, stopping practice to have him run sprints and holding him out of drills. After about two weeks, nothing had changed so I told him his effort wasn’t cutting it, and that I didn’t like getting on him every day and seeing him roll his eyes at me. He kept saying ‘I get it, Coach. I understand.’ And I said, ‘No, you don’t. Otherwise it wouldn’t be like this.’

“Finally he got frustrated and said, ‘I do get it, Coach. But what you don’t understand is that I’m lazy. I need you to yell at me and make me run sprints when I don’t play hard on defense.’ The rest of the year we had an understanding, and I didn’t feel bad about getting on him.”

Tauer explains there are three main areas of motivation: biological, psychological, and environmental. “All we have control over as coaches is the last one, and that’s only for a few hours a day,” he says. “So during practice, we have to model the behavior we want to see. If we talk about guys being good teammates, we need to ask ourselves, ‘How often do I stop practice to recognize the guy who made the extra pass, or took the charge, or dove on the floor to win a loose ball?’ Because if we reward them with praise, they’ll do more of it. If all we do is talk about our leading scorer, they will only want to score.”

While motivating in athletics can sometimes involve yelling and screaming, Tauer teaches his players it’s not that way in the real world. “The analogy I use is that most bosses aren’t going to yell and scream at their employees on a daily basis,” he says. “But they are going to expect you to do unbelievably good work. They’re going to expect you to be motivated because you recognize it’s the right thing—not because you’re scared or fearful.”