Improving mental focus

First things first - if you are in the habit of pulling a kid out if he commits a penalty, stop doing that. Penalties happen, they are part of the game. The kid obviously didn't mean to jump off sides, or facemask. Obviously there are times if a kid is hot tempered that you need to pull him out to calm him down, but to catagorically pull him out because he committed a penalty - No.

(that was common practice here when I first got here. One of our coaches pulled a kid because of PI...that PI saved a TD and the kid who committed it busted his @$$ to get there as he was not the one who blew coverage in the first place.)

2nd thing - you have to preach to them to "play the next play". Forget what happened the previous play, good or bad it has no influence on what you need to do as a player on the next play.

3rd thing - as a coach I think you need to create adversity in practice or weight room. Put them to the fire and see who cracks. Fortunately for me, that's just the kind of coach I am, its my natural personality (one of the few benefits). A kid has to have a certain level of mental toughness to even play for me and our defensive staff as we do not have any "hug em up" type of guys on our side of the ball.

4th thing - and I don't know if this is your case or not, but at this place, we have to work so hard at getting the kids to learn the game. It's like they've played forever but don't understand anything about it. Like a 1 tech doesn't understand why he can't just go run to the ball however he can get there instead of maintaining gap leverage...what happens, the guard allows him to go behind and it opens a cut back lane...they just don't get that part.

I think a lot of it comes from confidence - that's real confidence not the "rah-rah" BS before games and an understanding that mistakes happen and their ability to forget it, move on and play the next play.

Whatever your doing, be it warmups, conditioning, 7v7, whatever it is demand that they do the little things right. I'm talking about not going through the motions while warming up but actually trying to get better on every rep of the warmup (e.g., when doing high knees, actually get your knees up waist level or higher), proper stances before the ball is snapped in 7v7, proper footwork in run game drills, appropriate stance, not jumping offsides, and running all the way through the line if they are running sprints, literally demanding they do every dad-gum little thing right.

It's failure in the little things that will allow a team to beat themselves. If the other guys are just better than yours, it is what it is, but do not allow the other team to beat you because your guys don't do the little things right.

Demand excellence in the little things, every day. I like to tell them if we can't get everybody doing such a simple thing as getting in a proper stance right (as an example) how can we run a play consistently? If we can't do something as simple as high knees while warming up right what's going to happen when the ball is snapped? It always happens once a year that I have to say "Okay fellas, there is no sense in practicing the wrong stuff, since we are not mentally here we might as well spend our time getting into better condition" and then run the heck out of 'em. Give 'em a break once in awhile to tell them something like "I will not allow you as an individual and you as a team to come up short of your full potential for this season because you want to just go through the motions today. You have got the be mentally tough and focused and it starts right here and right now!", and off we go for another round.

If the offense turns it over in practice, the whole offense does pushups, not as punishment, but to reinforce the discipline that all 11 players must do their job. Hold each individual accountable to the unit's success. 1 fails, we all failed when it comes to execution. Now if one guy just keeps screwing it up I'd get somebody else in there, it doesn't make sense to discipline the whole group for one individual being a numbnut, but the key idea is to demand excellence in every little thing they do.

Execution errors will happen; guys will get beat by a physically superior opponent. But if they will do the little things right the other stuff will be minimized. If a guy gets beat 5 times in a row he's got to have a short memory and get his guy on the next play. That's mental toughness too, to hang in there even if you're getting pounded and keep fighting on every play. Focus is all about being present in the moment and is a skill that can be developed. The best way to develop that skill is to demand that they do the little things right that will enable them to do the big things it takes to be a winner on the field and in life.