Symposium Spotlight: Dan Abrahams
Note: this is the fifth and final article in our series highlighting the clinicians who are scheduled to present at this June’s NorCal Premier Soccer Summer Coaching Symposium. To sign up for the event, which is free to all NorCal members, click here.
As a youth soccer coach, one can get caught up in the innumerable aspects of creating a high level team environment.
There’s training plans, tactical sessions, lessons on principles, game scheduling, managing parents, picking tournaments, and so much more.
But one of the aspects of coaching that perhaps doesn’t get the attention it deserves is the psychological aspect of the player and team and how to optimize the development of the mind in order to ensure that each player is able to perform at the highest level.
That’s why NorCal Premier Soccer is pleased to welcome Dan Abrahams to this year’s Summer Coaching Symposium in Oakland.
The former professional golfer and professional coach now heads several different initiatives focused on high level psychological performance in his native England.
Abrahams, who has a First Class Honors degree in Psychology and a Masters degree in Sports Psychology, is the lead psychologist for England Golf and Rugby, has worked for half a dozen English Premier League teams, has written four books, one of which Gareth Bale claims to have changed his life, and hosts a podcast called the Sports Psych Show.
And in Oakland, he’ll deliver two presentations on the matter, helping NorCal’s membership better understand how they can tap into the mental side of performance in order to help their youth players the most.
The first session will involve establishing competitive frameworks to help players and teams improve from a competitive standpoint.
“The overarching term I use is ‘high performance mindset,’” Abrahams said. “How do you help your team establish a team high performance mindset and offer a few tools and techniques for players to find their own individual mindset?”
To demonstrate this, Abrahams will draw on his work from a previous stint on Arne Slot’s staff at the legendary Dutch club Feyenoord as well as his last five years working longside EPL teams.
For the second session, Abrahams will cover how to incorporate sports psychology tools and techniques into coaching sessions.
“I’m a big believer that so much of psychology and so much of the psycho-social work can be done on the grass during sessions,” he said. “Whether that’s through design, coach behavior and style, or bringing mental skills onto the grass with you, (there’s so much that can be done).”
Ultimately, Abrahams hopes to give as much insight as possible into improving strategies for players to be able to train and play with a more positive psychological outlook.
“The brain works in milliseconds; football works in seconds,” Abrahams said. “The brain trumps football for speed every time, the brain is much quicker. The way we’re designed as human beings is to feel thoughts, emotions, and feelings in milliseconds. When you watch your EPL, MLS, NWSL games the brains of those players are working in milliseconds, feeling thoughts, emotions, and feelings, many of which are counterproductive.”
“It’s not that it’s super simple to concentrate on the right and optimal things,” he added. “The way that the brain is designed still makes it challenging from a psycho-social standpoint in soccer.”
