5 Ways Great Coaches Motivate Their Teams After a Loss and Turn Defeat Into Future Success

Losing is inevitable in sports. Every coach must learn how to deal with it, and how to help their team grow from it.

As a coach, your players will follow your lead when it comes to how you respond to a loss. If you do not act in the right way, it could heavily impact your athletes performance in the future.

Though at the time it may not seem like it, losses might be the best thing that can happen to your team… if you respond to them the right way.

1. The First Message After a Loss is Essential

As soon as you get off the field, you must be ready to give the right message. Players will remember your first message after a loss the most.

A necessity is being able to control your own emotions as a coach, because if you react in an emotional way with overreactions and blame, your players will remember that and will follow that lead. You have to be able to focus on the larger picture and remove the recent feelings from the frame.

This first message is an immense opportunity to reiterate the teams long term goals, and why the loss that just happened doesn’t affect those. Getting the right tone across sets up your athletes for a quicker recovery and gives them more motivation for a turnaround.

2. Separate Effort from the Result

Losing a game doesn’t always mean the effort wasn’t there. As a coach, you must be able to separate the effort given by the players from the result of the game. Find ways to emphasize your athletes preparation level, and be sure to highlight positives that came from the competition.

Another way to keep the effort apart from the result can also be a way of keeping the team believing in each other. Highlight their teamwork, hustle, discipline, and how they stuck together. This will help them lean on each other to get over the loss quicker, while preventing them from sticking the loss on themselves.

3. Attempt to Rebuild Confidence

The next step to helping your team recover after a loss is by rebuilding that sense of belief and confidence. Reiterate to your players that one game doesn’t change the way they believe they can perform, or the way they believe in each other.

Use your messaging to continue to build your players up, by continuing to highlight positives. Make sure they know that the loss doesn’t define them, and instill in them that they will find a way to bounce back.

Another easy way to rebuild confidence is to speak about previous successes. Talk about a win from earlier in the season, a highlight from a season in the past, or even something you saw at practice the week before.

4. Refocus on the Larger Goal

A devastating loss is actually a great opportunity to recoup and get your team to refocus on the long-term goals of the program.

One of the best ways to get your players to have a short-term memory and move on from the loss is emphasizing that this loss doesn’t take them away from their long-term goal. Whether it be to win a certain amount of games, make playoffs, or win a championship, honing back in on the long-term goal can speed up your players mental recovery and refocusing.

This can be as simple as sprinkling in anecdotes about the long-term goal throughout your messaging to them. The key is reminding them that they are still on track to get to where they want to be.

5. Keep Consistent Messaging Through the Next Competition

The biggest key to having all of this messaging come together how you want it to, is keeping it all consistent throughout. You can’t have the initial message be different from the ideas you give your athletes the next day. From when you leave the field after a loss, through to the start of the next game, the messaging must all be the same tone and theme.

As I’ve said before, your players will follow your lead when it comes to how they react to a loss. If you’re giving a completely different message one day after another, your players won’t know how to act or respond.

Prevent Yourself from Having to Use These Strategies with FlipSled

If you’re looking for a way to level up your team and not even have to use these techniques, look no further than FlipSled. This innovative football sled has proven to be the best power development tool for football.

With its unique focus on powerful leg drive, explosive hips, and violent finishing, players can develop strength and explosiveness faster than ever before.

Learn more about FlipSled at www.theflipsled.com/.