Everyone makes mistakes. Even world champions do. It’s how sportspersons respond to such misfires that help them learn and grow at a constant pace.
Professional football trainers know that the best way to guide young football players to a satisfying sports career is to coach them on how to learn from their past mistakes before it’s too late.
Contrary to what many athletes believe, mistakes do not happen on the field alone. Often, young football players – especially those who do well during the season – have a hard time recognizing or accepting their failures and flaws until much later in life when it’s pretty useless to fret over them.
Here in this post, we will discuss the top five mistakes American football players do not recognize until they get older:
Mistake #1: A Football Player is too proud of His Stamina, Skills or Past Performance
Yes, all athletes including football players need to be confident of their physical strength, stamina, skills, and training. But football players also need to be coachable.
Many promising football players stop listening to their private football coaches (or team coaches) just because they had a great season last year. Others let go of the team spirit; when the play calls for someone to take a defensive approach, they may go about attacking the opponent and blow the whole thing up!
Mistake #2: Do the Minimum
Have you seen some young football players who just seem to know how to play? They appear to have a natural talent to play football even when they have not had a personal football coach. But, do you think all of these players will be counted as the greats, say, 10 years from now? It is not hard to guess an answer to this question.
At the youngest levels, talent can seize the day. But in the long run, many ‘talented’ football players fail to make their mark simply because they did not work hard all the time during practice. Talent evens out over the years, as football players get older.
Mistake #3: Focusing Too Much on the Numbers
The one and the only statistic that truly matters in football is the number of victories recorded by a team. Often, young and inexperienced football players start focusing too much on ‘personal numbers,’ sometimes to the detriment of the team.
Football is a team sport and individual football players should focus on they can win as a team.
Mistake #4: Trying to Control All Aspects of the Game
Many football players fail to perform to their potential simply because they spend more time and energy yelling at others, including the referee.
As football players get older, they realize how their attempts at micro-managing teammates were in fact keeping them from being in the moment. A football player should just focus on his play and leave everything else to the team coach.
Mistake #5: Taking Downs Off
At times, wide receivers decide not to block or finish their pre-decided routes as soon as the play moves on to the other side of the field. Some running backs may decide not to go on with their fakes if they notice the ball is not coming their way. Such things cannot happen.
A football team can find itself at its peak performance and record maximum number of victories in a season only when all players fully discharge all their responsibilities, at all times. Making an exception here is the same as making a mistake.
If you have a personal football coach, you should be more than willing to ask him about the mistakes you made recently. It is an opportunity to learn and become a better football player.