Developing Resilience in Soccer Players
Resilience is getting its moment in the spotlight. Everyone from politicians to educators is embracing this positive behavior in the face of challenges or stress. For athletes, developing resilience can make a big difference in self-regulation and the ability to hold up in competitive, high pressure situations.
What is resilience? You might prefer the word persistence. Or the current buzzword of choice: grit. They all refer to similar ideas. Performance psychologist Stu Singer, a sports psychologist who has worked with National Team, MLS, and NWSL players and ECNL and Development Academy players and teams says resilience helps you more effectively navigate challenging situations.
“Resilience is the quality of recovering quickly from failure and setback, and not only returning to whatever level you have already achieved, but actually using the adversity as an opportunity to grow your inherent strength even further,” he wrote on SoccerParenting.com.
Resilience isn’t just surviving a difficult situation. It’s more than that. It requires the youth athlete to learn to understand what happened and process that experience in a healthy way. For Singer it’s about being aware of where we are putting our thoughts and whether or not we’re looking at something from a positive frame of mind.
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” - C.S. Lewis
Stories of Resilience in Sport
Since we’re a Charlotte team let’s look first at an example from the Carolina Panthers. Thomas Davis came back from three ACL tears in the same knee. Yes, three. Two years after his third surgery, ESPN described him as “the best he's ever been.” And, just in case you’re not convinced of his resilience, after all the knee surgeries he broke his right forearm in the NFC Championship, had surgery the next day, and then played in the Super Bowl two weeks later. That’s not just physical resilience, but mental resilience too.
Another North Carolina favorite we can talk about in terms of resilience in sport? Michael Jordan. He was cut from his high school basketball team. He kept playing and ended up playing 15 seasons in the NBA and winning six championships with the Chicago Bulls. He’s famously stated, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Any time a team comes from behind to win the game you can point to people on that team who were resilient. Their persistence netted fans some especially memorable matches. Consider the US Women’s Team quarterfinal match against Brazil in the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The USA started off great thanks to an own-goal by Brazil in the second minute. Yet in the 65th minute a penalty kick was awarded to Brazil. Hope Solo made a tremendous save. But then the ref called for the penally to be retaken. This time Marta stepped up to the ball and scored. And the US was now down a player with defender Rachel Buehler red carded. In overtime, Marta scored again leaving the US to battle back from behind if they wanted to stay in the tournament. With 10 players. In the 122nd minute, Abby Wambach headed home the game-tying goal off of a left-footed cross from Megan Rapinoe to score the latest goal in World Cup history. At 2-2, the teams went to penalty kicks and the US women were able to win the game.
Any of these three anecdotes is an example of the importance of never giving up. So, don’t give up in the quest to develop resilience either. Here’s help.
Tips for Developing Resilience
So, how does one develop resilience? There are several foundational skills that will help:
Fostering awareness that the athlete ultimately controls how they respond to anything that comes their way.
Developing the athlete’s sense that they can make a difference in their sport and their life.
Helping the athlete to regulate and manage emotions.
Encouraging living in the present rather than dwelling on past mistakes or anticipating future setbacks.
Acknowledging there is risk involved in sport. We can’t know what is going to happen, but we can optimistically hope for the best.
Embracing gratitude for their ability to play the sport they love and play it well with people they enjoy.
Becoming more flexible in thinking and trying to look at the bigger picture rather than sweating the small stuff.
Developing a positive personality and being wiling to take advantage of the support available to you can help too. This means the athlete needs to communicate with those around him or her when he or she is experiencing tough times.
As Baz Luhrmann put it in his widely shared convocation address, “The race is long and, in the end, only with yourself.” He also touts the importance of wearing sunscreen, but that’s a subject for a future blog (maybe).
