As a soccer player, training your body is incredibly important; both at soccer practice as well as privately at the gym to ensure you stay in peak physical shape. However, there is often a disproportionate amount of emphasis on physical training in sport, when mental training is arguably just as important. Achieving mental toughness and being about to focus yourself mentally puts you in an advantageous position against other athletes on the field. Improving your mental focus is important so you can achieve and perform under pressure, and do not mess up when you need to score an important goal. Here are three ways that you can improve your mental focus in order to help your overall soccer performance. Try them all to see which one helps you the most –you might find one in particular more useful than they others, or perhaps they will all be equally helpful to you!
Engage your mind
Keeping your mind active is very important. In soccer, you constantly need to make split second decisions and do well under pressure. Doing other activities that challenges your brain in similar ways can be beneficial to your mental focus on the field. Good idea are playing video games where you need to make quick decisions, or online betting that focuses on the same thing. Using a free bet calculator can help significantly with the latter. The betting calculator helps you calculate your projected returns so that you can make the most informed decision about how much to bet on what. In addition, their accumulator calculator is a useful tool to help you compute your future profits; thus saving you a lot of valuable time. It also has the added benefit of helping you choose the best online bookmaker, who can help you maximize your winnings.
Use imagery
Using imagery or mental rehearsal can be a very effective tool for tuning your mind into sharp focus for game day. By visualizing yourself successfully kicking and scoring in various contexts, you better prepare your brain for what it will be like when you are actually trying to do it on the field during a high pressured game. Scientific studies have also shown that mental rehearsal is an effective method to increase efficacy on the sports field. So, if you have not tried this before, give it a shot –it could really help you improve your game!
Study the professionals
When it comes to focus and motivation, studying what other professional soccer players do can be highly effective. It can mentally prepare yourself for a variety of situation on the field. When you watch professional players, you will find it easier to implement the same strategies they use on the field since you are more familiar with it. Seeing other athletes at the top of their game can be a really good source of motivation; and will push you to try even harder to be the very best and aspire to your favorite soccer icons.