Your Players Freeze Under Pressure? Try These 3 Practice Fixes

Coaches, do your players freeze under pressure? Here are 3 easy game-changing practice strategies to fix that! Get more coaching tips in our free mental game training → https://coachfreetraining.com

If your team looks great in practice but unravels when the lights come on… this episode is for you. I'm breaking down 3 simple, proven fixes to help high school and middle school coaches train mental toughness, resilience, and composure under pressure...without adding more minutes to practice.

I’m Coach Bre, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4× state champion. 🏆 

I’ve been exactly where you are, leading talented teams that crumble when it matters most. These three coaching tips helped turn my team into one that thrives in the biggest pressure moments.

🔥 In this video, you’ll learn:
✅ The Competitive Cauldron: a system we use to score everything & create urgency
✅ Smart score manipulation tactics that train athletes in pressure moments
✅ Why team consequences (done right) can build focus and accountability
✅ How to integrate mental training like the 3-2-1 BRAVE mindset routine
✅ How to teach a SnapBack routine that helps players recover quickly from mistakes

This episode is packed with actionable ideas you can use tomorrow to build your athletes’ mental game, increase peak performance, and help your team play loose and confident, even when the pressure is on. 💪

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction and Coach Bre's Background
00:46 Creating a Competitive Culture
01:44 Implementing the Competitive Cauldron
03:46 Score Manipulation Techniques
06:28 Team Consequences with Purpose
07:37 Training Mental Resilience
08:22 Daily Mindset Routine: 3-2-1 BRAVE
09:38 Conclusion and Further Resources

👇 Coaches — comment below: What’s one way you’ve added pressure to your practices to train mental resilience?

📌 Build your team’s mental game confidently:
🔹 Grab our in-depth FREE training → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 Follow us on TikTok→ @coachhergame

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Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

If I ever have one of those teams that looks really good in practice and then. Within the pressure of competition, they completely unravel. I've been there many times and that's why today I'm breaking down the three things that I do in my gym every week to create pressure on my team so that they are prepared for when it matters. And if I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bre. I'm a mental performance coach for athletes, but I also help coaches. Coach the mental side of the game and build the culture of their teams. And I'm in it with you. I am a 14 year head volleyball coach, and I have been in these situations more times than I can count. In fact, the past four consecutive years we've been in state championship matches where we've been able to win in the biggest stage and in the biggest moments, and we wouldn't have been able to do it without preparing ahead of time for those moments. So let's get into it. The three things that I love to do, number one, we compete. We score everything every single day, and we have created this culture in our gym that we are always competing. And I know that sometimes it can be tricky, especially those of us that coach girl athletes and we run this fine balance of competing. Without wanting to pit people against each other. So I know that balance exists, but we talk about it in terms of if we want to perform our best, we have to make this environment, our practice environment harder than what we're going to see in a game. And the only way we're gonna be able to do that is through your effort and your energy and you going all out. So. We often say our biggest competition is here in our own gym and ways that we do that, we do it right away with something called Earn the Right on day one of practice during our season. So got a whole video on that, on how you can actually. Stimulate some of this pressure through some challenges that your athletes have to work through physically and mentally. So head to that video if you want to check that out. But the other thing that we do is implement a competitive cauldron. So Ansen do, he created what is a competitive cauldron, and we use a modified version of it. Essentially we score everything and everybody gets points based on how they perform in small group drills in six on six drills in tournaments. And as I mentioned, I coach volleyball, so I will give you examples of volleyball specific things in this, but this applies to all sports. So we have names on a board, and after every single drill that scored, the athletes go and they report their score next to their name. And so if we do a small group drill and I'm saying, okay, it's games to seven and a team wins, they've got seven, everyone else goes to the board. The team that got seven points, you know, if your team got four points, they put four, so on and so forth. Forth. And then we play other games. We play other small group games. Um. You know, six on six tournament things and everything as much as possible is scored and put into the cauldron. I usually reset the cauldron every week so they can kind of see on a weekly basis where they are. And we typically have them look at their numbers within their position groups to kind of see where they're landing that week. And we use it as an opportunity to get better. Like it's feedback and it's this competitiveness that I want a high cauldron score and I wanna be pushing and I wanna come out on top in my position group while also, you know, encouraging. The other people in their position group. That's where the fine line happens. But just this, um, emphasis on that, that we're competing always because that's what happens in a competition in a game. We're always competing, and so we wanna do that in practice too. Now, obviously there's times where we're like breaking down a skill and we're working on. Mechanics of certain things. We don't score that because we don't wanna add pressure to when we're trying to like, fix things. Because obviously when we're trying to work on things, as you know, sometimes it gets worse and they make more errors. And so we, we wanna remove some of that pressure in that situation. But overall, we're scoring everything and we're keeping track of score. So. It's not punishment or anything, but um, it is a way for athletes to compete with each other. Okay, number two, score manipulation is kind of the overarching concept here. So this applies to all sports, but for us, what we do is I ought to manipulate the score so that we are in these red zone or pressure situations. So we are tied at 23 all and we've gotta win two points. In order to win the match or the other day I just did one. Um, where we have five sets, you gotta win best three outta five. But each of those five sets has a different score so that they start out. So it might be 1919, it might be 21 all, and there might be, um, a score discrepancy, like 24, 23. So you're battling back from game point, which was the exact situation that we were in in this past state championship where we were down set point and match point. So the other team was serving for championship. Point, like if they won this point, they were gonna win state they hadn't won. Sat in 36 years. And I was like, Hey, we've actually been here. We've actually, like, I luckily had a timeout left that I could call and you know, I had'em do their breath, their reset word, which I'll talk about in a second. I'm like, Hey, we've been here, we're gonna side out and then we're gonna take it from there. And that's exactly what we did. So I, I'm not saying that it was because we practiced it ahead time, but it definitely didn't hurt us. And I'm also saying that mental training and giving them tools in these moments. Also did not hurt us. Anyways, manipulate the score so that you're putting them in these situations. Now, obviously, you can't replicate the exact pressure because once you are in that arena and there's people in the stands and there's a big score on the scoreboard, like yes, it does feel different, but as much as possible, we want them to recognize like, Hey, I've been here. This is what we need to do. I often do plus minus scoring. Scoring as well to add a little bit more pressure. So plus minus scoring is, you know, you get a a normal point for a rally win, but you get a point taken away if you make an unfor error. So for us, that's like hitting in the net or hitting out or serving in the net or serving out. Now, don't do this super often because we also wanna encourage aggressive. Plays and with aggression and with taking risks, you're gonna have more errors. So I do this in end of rally or end of set situations because I want to emphasize, hey, we wanna win and we wanna go for it and not make silly horse errors. Okay? Um, on the flip side of that, getting bonus points. So bonus point for whatever you wanna emphasize can also be really good. A first ball side out, I'll often give a bonus point. So that is, um, you know, we can execute on the first pass at a serve receive instead of letting their rally go on. So the other tip to this is draw attention. Draw their attention to what situation they're in. So if you're like, Hey, we're down to, what's our response? Or, Hey, it's tight score, who's gonna step up and put this ball away? That gets them used to hearing these pressure situations and associated with larger problem solving instead of panic. Okay, so that is number two. First is compete and score everything. Two is manipulate the score as best you can. Um, put'em in red zone situations, put'em in situations where they're down and they've gotta battle back. Number three is a controversial one. Okay. This is teen consequences, but with a purpose. Um, yes, I do from time to time, put a little pressure on through the legs, okay? Meaning that we have to get this certain goal, and if we don't, we are running a set of sidelines or something like that. I, I don't do this. Super often, and it's often not a large volume of things because I definitely do not believe that running lines and all of that actually makes you a better volleyball player, a better whatever player, especially if you're running lines for mistakes. Like that's, that really doesn't make any sense. But to add a little bit of pressure. I often do this in serve, receive. So, um, I'll put a goal on our serve, receive passers, you gotta pass the 2.0 or, or higher. Anything below that, we've got a set of sidelines and it just adds and just digging bit more of some pressure. The other thing is, um, sometimes I'll end practice just with like, Hey, everybody's gotta get their serve in and, um, if we miss your serve, we start back over at the beginning. So it's kind of also some of this pressure that, hey, my whole team is expecting me to make my surf, which. Is what we're expecting in a match too. Okay. So the key to this is that we're not using conditioning as a consequence for like skill related mistakes. It's just to add a little bit of touch of pressure every once in a while. Now, the overarching thing though, with all of this is that we can't just throw our kids into the chaos. We have to give them skills to be able to manage it. So I can't just throw them into pressure situations and then be like, okay, sink or swim, like figure it out. We gotta give them skills that they can use in this moment. So the moments that really matter are the ones where they're able to use and rely on their mental training skills when they're under pressure. Because when they're under pressure, they're probably going to fear state. Like, I don't wanna mess up, don't serve the ball to me, don't do any of this to me. And we want them to. Actually have the opposite response. We want them to say, ah, I've earned this. This is pressure. I'm feeling it. Let's go serve the ball. To me, I want the ball. We want them to have more of that aggressive and productive self-talk. So we train that self-talk ahead of time before practice. I use something called brave. This is our daily mindset routine where they're writing down affirmations that they have determined at the beginning of the season to help remind them of who they are. They practice their reset word. We also practice our snapback routine in this. So that's a simple skill that they can use when they're feeling the pressure so that they can bounce back from moments where it feels like it's too much. So we intentionally train and give them skills to be able to lean on in those moments. So when I am saying, Hey, it's 24, all. Who's gonna step up? You know, I can also say, let's go say your affirmation, say your mantra to yourself, and go. Or, Hey, our team just made unforced error. Now we're in a deficit. Time to do your snapback routine. Let's go. And to be honest, this came in really clutch in this last state championship. I already told you that we were down championship point and we had my software going back to serve. And I was like, all right, here we go. This is her first tournament or state tournament. First time on varsity. I was like, okay, let's see what she's got. She was clutch. She was able to serve those last two points to put us into a fifth set and then win state. And afterwards, the people who interviewed her were like, what were you thinking? And she said, I was just doing my breath and saying my reset word, doing my breath, saying my reset word. And I was like. There it is. That's our snapback routine right there. I'm so glad that we actually took five minutes outta practice every day to train the mental side of the game. So if you wanna give your athletes these skills so that they're not just like in pressure and it's a sinking swim situation, you're actually confident that they have skills to lean on. I break it all down in my free training. That's at coach free training.com, so you can check all that out. If you specifically wanna check out the snapback routine and that skill that was clutch for us in the state championship. Head to the next video that I have linked here. If that's where I will lay out how you can teach that to your team.