Factor #1: Technical Ability (+ Motivation)

Technical Ability.

This super important aspect of your training will serve as the basic platform for all other areas of individual development. The fundamentals of football begin here and end here so you’ve got to build a solid foundation before anything else can really develop optimally. 

The skills you learn must be repeatedly practiced so you can develop and maintain them throughout your football career. This is why you see some of the worlds best players and teams in their training sessions, working on the basics. 

As George Mumford puts it in his awesome book, The Mindful Athlete: 

“Every high-performing mindful athlete knows that if you want to achieve something, there’s a good chance that you can, no matter what, if—and this is a big if—you’re willing to pay the price. You not only have to focus on your intention, but you also have to be willing to get up early in the morning and do the same thing thousands and thousands of times—and then another thousand times—with intention. Which leads me to deliberate practice. ... When I worked with Kobe Bryant, he was making about thirteen hundred three-pointers a day in the off-season when he was working on his three-point shot.”

Woah! Kobe was willing to pay the price, are you? Even when you want to train more advanced techniques, you’ve got to put forth the diligent effort by yourself to practice it until it feels second nature. 

This will ultimately lead to better game performance.

Those who are able to reach higher heights have something in common. They all want to improve beyond their previous abilities, day after day, month after month, year after year. They never are satisfied with mediocrity, nor are they willing to settle on being good enough. This intrinsic motivation carries them beyond what the average players achieve. 

This being said, you must focus on developing ways to motivate yourself. One way is by cultivating a growth mindset. In practicing this, you’ll be able to focus more on the positive aspects of your game, and come up with goal-oriented solutions to any current challenges.

For example, if you’re training alone, and you’ve got the ball at your feet and you go to shoot on the net. You miss. Instead of going the route of negative Nick, who throws his hands in the air and says, “Why do I suck so bad?” you could focus on on the positives and ask yourself, “What actions can I take to perform this better?”

The mind follows in the direction that you lead it, so if you ask for negatives, your mind will find all the negative answers. 


Practice with positivity and ask yourself the right kind of questions! 

-z

P.S. Can you figure out the price that you need to pay? Good, now go out and pay it!