How To Stay Calm On The Ball

Do you find yourself feeling anxious or nervous when you get on the football?

Does it feel like the game is going a thousand miles an hour?

In this article, I'm going to give you five tips on how you can stay calm on the football.

If you're serious about moving up the football pyramid, learning to stay calm on the ball is essential.

And even more so, being comfortable on the ball whilst under pressure is key.

So tip number one is;

As the old cliche saying goes, practice makes perfect.

Dedicate a part of each training session getting comfortable manipulating the football.

There are a ton of ball mastery videos online which will show you how to do this.

But, the more familiar and comfortable you are with the ball, the more confident you will become.

So make sure you're including some ball mastery into every session that you do.

Don’t shy away from it during your team training either.

Get yourself on the ball as much as possible and put yourself in those positions which mimic what you'll during a game.

The more you do this in training, the more familiar those situations become to you.

And the more familiar they are, the more comfortable and in control you feel when it comes to game day.

Try to keep yourself focused for 90 minutes during the game.

It’s not easy, our minds wander and switch off.

By staying focused and keeping your head on a swivel you make sure you know where your teammates and opposition are at all times.

Knowing this information before you get the ball makes it feel like you've got a lot more time on the ball.

Rather than receiving the ball, then getting your head up to look where everybody is, then deciding what you're going to do.

Knowing that information before you get the ball will help you feel like you've got a lot more time.

A lack of self belief will create doubts and fears in the way that you play your game.

This will lead to you second guessing your decisions, which will slow down your actions.

This in turn will make the game feel like it's moving a lot quicker than it actually is.

There are many strategies that can help with this. We won’t cover them here as they need their own article.

But one of the ways you can improve your self belief is going back to point number one.

Practice.

Practice helps you get familiar with situations.

So when they arise in the game it won't be a shock, you'll already know you can deal with it.

I used to struggle big time with panicking on the ball, and applying perceived pressure to myself.

Something I found very useful in my game was reminding myself that I had more time than I thought I did.

This doesn't mean that I started dwelling on the ball or slowing down what I was going to do.

I realised that I did't have to hurry when I was on the ball, and I have more time to focus on technique than I thought I did.

This allowed me to stay composed and focus on executing the correct technique.

When you are playing football, you have a lot of adrenaline pumping around your body and you can quite often let this take control and cause tunnel vision.

You can fight the effects of that adrenaline by talking to yourself and reminding yourself to stay calm.

This allows you to feel more calm and controlled on the ball.

And another tactic that will help is to set yourself targets throughout the game.

These targets will help keep you switched on and focused for the entire 90 minutes. They will also help block out those negative thoughts.

Make sure the targets you're setting are realistic, achievable and they're things in your control.

So rather than saying something like,

“I'm going to score a hat trick this game”

you might set yourself the target of,

“I will make sure I get into the box for every cross my team delivers”.

Or if you're a defender, rather than saying,

“I'm going to make a match saving tackle in this game”,

you might say to yourself

“I'm going to focus on having good positioning and defending on the front foot”.