Are Your Words Motivating Or Demotivating Your Athletes?

💪🏼 Words matter! Learn 3 coaching phrases every high school coach must use to boost confidence, unlock peak performance, and motivate athletes. Get more tips here 👉 https://coachfreetraining.com

Want a team full of athletes who give 100%, believe in themselves, and stay motivated—even after mistakes? It all starts with your words as a coach. But let’s be real—coaching is busy. Between game plans, drills, and fixing mistakes, it’s easy to default to a quick “good job” or focus only on corrections.

There’s a better way. In this video, I’ll teach you 3 powerful coaching phrases that will:
✅ Build athlete confidence (even in role players)
✅ Increase motivation without fake positivity
✅ Help athletes bounce back from mistakes faster
✅ Strengthen your team culture & leadership

🏆 Whether you coach basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, or any high school sport, these proven motivational phrases will transform how your athletes respond to feedback and keep them engaged.

📌 Key Coaching Strategies You’ll Learn:
✔️ The 4:1 Feedback Ratio – Why your athletes need 4 positives for every 1 critique
✔️ How to Use ‘I Loved the Way You…’ – Reinforce the right behaviors
✔️ Why ‘I See You…’ Builds Trust & Leadership
✔️ How ‘Next Play’ Keeps Athletes Focused & Confident

Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction to Motivating Athletes
00:52 The Power of Positive Feedback
02:08 Phrase 1: I Loved the Way You...
03:16 Phrase 2: I See You...
03:55 Phrase 3: Next Play
05:04 Conclusion and Next Steps

📣 Coaches—what’s your go-to phrase for motivating your athletes? Drop it in the comments!

🚀 Want your athletes to start practice focused and locked in? Be sure to catch the next video!
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Transcript

1:04

If you want a team full of athletes who give 100%, believe in themselves, and would run through a brick wall for you, it starts with your words and what you're saying and not saying to motivate them. But as coaches, there's always a million things going through our heads. The practice, the game plans, the drills, fixing mistakes. And so we often resort to a quick'good job' or just pointing out the negatives or worse, simply not saying anything at all because of all the other things that are running through our heads. Well, today you're going to learn a different way. In fact, you're going to learn three phrases that you can be saying daily and should be saying daily to change all of that. And by the way, I'm Coach Bre I am a Mental Performance Coach for athletes, also a head high school volleyball coach for over 12 years, and the Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor I help coaches just like you strengthen their team's culture, leadership, and mental toughness without adding more to your plate. Now here's something that most coaches don't think about. In fact, I didn't until I learned this. The four to one feedback ratio. Research shows that for every one piece of negative feedback, athletes need at least four pieces of positive feedback to stay motivated and confident. Why? Because our brain actually processes negative feedback more intensely than positive feedback. We know this is true in our own lives. And so that one correction that we give to athletes, while might be helpful and absolutely true, But your athlete can feel like something so much bigger than what you intended. And without that positive reinforcement along with it, it can actually shut them down. And as our job as coaches is really to not just point out what went wrong, but also highlight what's going well. So the four to one feedback ratio isn't about sugarcoating things. It's about athletes having the encouragement that they need to bounce back, stay motivated and keep improving. So in this video, I'm going to share. Three powerful phrases you can use daily to keep that balance and get the most out of your athletes. And before I do make sure you like this video, subscribe to our channel. If you want more strategies on how do you help elevate your coaching, strengthen your athletes, mental game, and build a team culture in your program that you are proud of. Let's keep this ratio by the first phrase that you're saying daily. I loved the way you, I loved the way you, pretty simple, right? But saying this is super powerful because it highlights a very specific positive behavior, making the athlete feel seen and valued for their contribution. Everyone loves hearing it framed in this way. They automatically perk up. If you have something good to say about them, especially if it is. Specific and it's positive sugar coating and a good job and well done. And all of that doesn't really hit the same as something that is very specific that you noticed in your athlete also reinforces the behavior that you want to see repeated, motivating them to continue performing. Well, an example of this is very simple. I loved the way you communicated with your teammates during that drill. It kept everyone on the same page. So where can you be saying this to your athletes instead of just saying, good job, can you change that into an I loved the way you during a water break, just pull, pull an athlete aside two seconds, and it's going to allow them to come back into your practice feeling a lot more motivated. Number two, I see you, I see you, I see you doing that thing. I see you putting in the extra work after practice. It does not go unnoticed. This phrase directly acknowledges effort, especially the kind that might otherwise go unnoticed. It boosts this intrinsic motivation because the athlete feels appreciated for their hard work, not just for their performance. This is especially good if you have athletes who are in positions of role players, right? They might not be a starter. They might not be the athlete that's getting a lot of the accolades. Simply saying, I see you. And then being specific about what you see can be a game changer, especially for those athletes. All right, number three. Last one. Next play. Next play. This is an opportunity to give some feed forward information rather than feed back. And why this really works is that instead of dwelling on what went wrong, we as coaches like to point out what went wrong. That's our job. I'm not saying you should stop doing that, but often we are critical and pointing out all these things and it can make an athlete feel really overwhelmed. Like they're not doing anything. Right. So this phrase actually shifts to the future. It's actually putting some, some belief and some hope in the athlete that we know and believe that they can actually accomplish what we want to have them accomplish in that next play. So it's giving advice, but it's also keeping the tone positive and helping them. Stay motivated to improve. So a great example of this is next play, focus on keeping your hands up and staying low. You'll get the block. So maybe your athlete did do something that, you know, they, they kept their hands not where they were supposed to be. And they missed the block instead of saying you missed the block because your hands were too high. Feed forward information saying, next play next time, here's what I want you to do. I want you to focus on keeping your hands low. You're going to get the block. All right. So it's also instilling a little bit of hope and a little bit of belief in our athletes, which is so, so important to them now, motivating your athletes with the right words is a game changer. Honestly, you're going to put these three phrases in your coaching toolbox. I even write a little four to one on my whiteboard and on my clipboard just to remind me of this four to one ratio. But what if there was a way to actually help your athletes have this mindset of focus, accountability, and connection before practice even starts. That's exactly what we do in our pre practice routine. So if you haven't already checked out this next video on how to create a pre practice routine, you're going to want to check that one out. It's a simple 10 to 15 minute routine that you do before practice to help foster this and I'll make your practices so much more smooth and a lot more connected when you have a solid pre practice routine. So I will see you in the next video.