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Mental Skills Toolkit:

How Self-Reflection in Soccer Can Help you Get REALLY, REALLY Good

Published: February 7, 2022
Updated: February 20, 2023
By: Jenn Ireland

Category: Growth-Mindset, Individual Training, Soccer Game Film Analysis

If you want to be the best soccer player that you can possibly be, it’s not enough to just show up at your team training sessions and work hard. Many soccer players believe that it is, but it’s not.

If you really want to maximize your potential on the soccer field and and be able to play at peak performance, you need to get invested. You need to be regularly training on your own, actively working on your strength & fitness, focusing on getting good nutrition and sleep, and have a consistent habit of self-reflecting.

Self-reflection in soccer is something that doesn’t get talked about near enough, which is unfortunate considering the immense impact it has on a player’s growth. The importance of reflective practices, of examining and observing yourself and your actions, cannot be understated when it comes to development.

Whether we are talking about going through your game film or assessing your play using guided questions, self-reflection in soccer is one of the single BEST, most powerful, practices you can develop as a soccer player looking to improve. This is because when you get really into self-reflection in soccer, the insight you gain has the power to inspire a passion for relentless learning and self-improvement which really opens up the game in ways you never thought possible.

Self-reflection in soccer + accountability

When players get serious about self-reflection and add it into their weekly routine, they are taking ownership of their development. And taking ownership of your development is the #1 way to become a better soccer player, hands down.

Self-reflection in soccer is all about personal accountability and being invested. What is an invested player? An invested soccer player is someone who SAYS they want to get better and then goes out and actually DOES something about it. It is about having an intention to improve, but then more importantly, taking the ACTION to get yourself there. That’s investment.

The best part about self-reflection in soccer isn’t just that it helps you get better, it’s that it can help you get MUCH, MUCH better. This is because self-reflection in soccer isn’t just about reflecting on how you play and figuring out what skills you need to improve – it’s so much bigger than that. The process of self-reflection in soccer is about:

#1 increasing your self-awareness

#2 gaining valuable insight into yourself as a player and as a person

#3 increasing your mental toughness, your confidence & your resiliency skills

#4 fostering a genuine passion & curiosity for relentless learning

#5 having an attitude of continual drive for self-improvement (aka – healthy striving mentality)

When you bring self-reflection into your routine, you are inviting all of the above into EVERY PART OF YOUR GAME. You are opening up entirely new levels of potential for yourself as a soccer player.

This post is going to dive into EXACTLY how to make this happen, and even includes a free worksheet bundle of 4 reflective practices to jump-start your new habit of self-reflection. (If you want to skip the reading and go straight to practicing, you can get the self-reflection worksheets here).

What is a reflective practice?

A reflective practice is the ACT of self-reflection – it’s anytime you examine, observe or analyze yourself and your actions. It is a form of mental skills training that’s all about insight, introspection and being self-aware. A reflective practice is similar to ‘learning from experience’, but different in that it happens afterwards and not during the experience.

Self-reflection in soccer is the practice of thinking about, assessing and analyzing what you did or didn’t do, and then using that information to better prepare yourself for next time: either by learning from your mistakes and deciding to do something differently, or by formulating & carrying out a training plan to help you gain the skills you need.

The soccer blog Players Development Project describes self-reflection in soccer as a skill that “allows players to clarify their thoughts, gain insights and deepen their understanding of decision-making skills and tactical frameworks.” They also emphasize how self-reflection, through reflective practices, is an important habit that contributes immensely to the successful development of soccer players.

When you do a reflective practice, you are doing it with the intention that you will take the insight you gain and do something with it to help you get better at soccer. You will ‘create meaning’ out of the self-reflection and use that to improve and progress forward. A Harvard Business Review article about making time for self-reflection describes this well saying that making meaning is crucial to ongoing growth and development.

"Reflection gives the brain an opportunity to pause amidst the chaos, untangle and sort through observations and experiences, consider multiple possible interpretations, and create meaning. This meaning becomes learning, which can then inform future mindsets and actions."

Jennifer Porter, Harvard Business Review

Self-awareness is a prerequisite for self-reflection in soccer

Self-awareness is key to building a self-reflection practice (in fact, it’s key to everything growth-minded in soccer). In order for reflective practices to work FOR YOU and not turn AGAINST you (into self-defeating moments full of negative self-talk) you need to have a minimum level of self-awareness. Yes, your self-awareness will grow and get stronger as you begin to do this more regularly, but you still need some semblance of it to start.

Why is some degree of self-awareness a prerequisite for self-reflection in soccer? Because there can be no change to your game without first UNDERSTANDING what needs changing. If you can’t articulate that something is ‘off’ in your game, that there are pieces of your game that NEED attention, then you will never be able to change anything. Being aware that something is happening and being able to see it and talk about it is the first step to gaining anything useful from self-reflection in soccer.

I’m not going to lie though, self-reflection in soccer is HARD. You are going to have to look at mistakes you’ve made, failures you’ve had. And you are going to have to do this while NOT being overly self-critical or cruel to yourself.

Self-compassion is a necessary part of building your resiliency skills. And if/when the negative and self-defeating thoughts DO show up, self-awareness can help you push through and calm the mind. The self-aware part of you knows why you are here: you are here to grow – and growth requires you do challenging things. Hard things.

Make self-reflection a priority: here's why

Here are the reasons why you should start a reflection practice ASAP. Self-reflection in soccer will help you:

identify strengths and weaknesses in all areas of your game
gain resiliency skills and increase your mental toughness
increase your confidence by helping you prepare both physically and mentally
overcome perfectionism and fear of failure
gain invaluable insight into the mental side of your game, including how performance anxiety affects you on the field
increase your self-awareness skills and cultivate a healthy striving mentality
get excited to learn more and go more in depth with certain topics
get better at goal setting by being able to target specific areas for improvement

There are a LOT of positive benefits for adding self-reflection to your weekly routine – so why don’t more soccer players do it? Why don’t they make self-reflection a priority?

The reasons most soccer players don’t have a habit of self-reflection in soccer is that they either don’t understand the benefits, they’d rather avoid looking at their weaknesses or simply, they don’t know HOW to self-reflect. Let’s dive into that last one right now.

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Here's HOW to self-reflect (+ FREE worksheets!)

In soccer, you can self-reflect in two ways: by either thinking back and remembering, or by using video. Neither is right or wrong, they are just different. When you start a reflection practice, my recommendation would be to do a mix of both, as there are different benefits to each one.

When you do a reflection practice by thinking back, this is the more subjective approach – meaning it is based on what you remember happening from your point of view. It is your own personal interpretation. When you do a reflection practice by reviewing video, this is more from an objective viewpoint – meaning it is based on actual data of what happened. I often say to my players that one of the beauties of video is that you can’t argue with it.

Self-assessments

Self-assessment is a reflective practice done via a questioning approach with a formal framework (such as a worksheet). In soccer, this means following a guideline specifically designed to get you thinking about the things that will help you improve your game.

When doing an assessment, you’ll go through a predetermined criteria to analyze your actions. You establish strengths, room for improvements and insights based on an evaluation of your own performance. Example: Question – what could I have done better this game? Answer – I could have controlled my first touch so that I didn’t lose possession right away.

Analysis is still an assessment, although it is more detailed oriented and is only possible in soccer by reviewing video. Analysis happens when you gather data and information, and then use that info to help you better prepare for next time. Example: Question – how many times did you keep possession with your first touch, and how many times did you lost it? Answer – I kept possession on my first touch 13 times and I lost possession with my first touch 15 times.

FREE self-reflection worksheet bundle

In order to help you get started with your self-reflection practice, I’ve put together a FREE self-reflection worksheet bundle with includes the following FOUR worksheets:

Worksheet #1) Post-Game Reflection PART 1: Game Assessment

Our game assessment is a post-game reflection worksheet that is meant to be done within 24 hours of a game. It is a guided set of questions to help you reflect on your play, on your team’s play and on your pre and post game mentality.

Worksheet #2) Post-Game Reflection PART 2: Game Film Analysis

Our game film analysis worksheet is designed to be a study companion to complete while watching your game film. It includes elements of both tactical and technical analysis.

Worksheet #3) Individual Training Analysis

This set of guided questions is for the more advanced player who is filming themselves individually training. The questions are designed to help you fine-tune your technical touch and get really detailed with how you are making contact with the ball.

Worksheet #4) End-of-Week Reflection

This worksheet is a game-changer. Any player at any level will benefit from this weekly reflection as it helps you create a very intentional mindset moving from one week into the next.

Journaling & vlogging

Unguided reflection, with an informal framework, is another type of self-reflection in soccer that works really well. Start a practice of recording your thoughts, either by writing in a journal, taking videos of yourself talking, or even with something as simple as jotting down thoughts in your phone’s notes program.

When doing this sort of self-reflection, try to write down or talk about how you honestly and truly feel, not what you think you SHOULD feel.

This helps you be able to suss out where you are currently at and where you need to go. Expressing yourself and getting into words how you think or feel about something is a very important first step in gaining the self-awareness and introspective that you need to to grow your game.

To make this a habit, start sitting down after games, or training sessions, and recording your thoughts and feelings about what happened. It doesn’t need to be long, even just 5 minutes is fantastic – re-hashing what went well today and what could use some improvement.

This type of reflection practice is self-motivated and self-guided, its more about the action of taking time to reflect than it is about exactly what you are talking or writing about. If you DO want more guidance though, start with Game Assessment in the FREE self-reflection worksheet bundle.

video is important for self-reflection in soccer

One of my favorite trainers in the soccer world right now is David Copeland-Smith of Beast Mode Soccer. I recently saw him demo an individual training session at the 2022 United Soccer Coaches convention in Kansas City and, once again, he impressed. David is a huge proponent of players taking ownership of their own development, in fact his entire platform is built off of the notion of personal accountability & player’s taking responsibility for their own development.

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The reason I am bringing him up here is because one of the main points that he made in his USC presentation was: do not underestimate the power of self-reflection.

When David said this, he was referencing using video (for both individual training and game film) to self-reflect, analyze and improve. Video can really help you figure things out in ways that simply just remembering, cannot. When you use video, you get to look at your play, at your technique or tactical decisions, from a different point of view, from an objective perspective. And seeing things from a different angle really has the potential to just give you incredible, incredible insight.

"We want players to learn from every touch. It wasn't great? Figure it out."

David Copeland-Smith, Beast Mode Soccer

Not only is it really important to have game film to review, it is also really important to record yourself during your individual training sessions. If you want to get better at the technical elements of your game, you have to record your sessions and watch them back in order to correct and fine-tune things. Our Individual Training Analysis worksheet is perfectly designed to help you analyze and improve your touches while watching video of yourself doing footwork and ball mastery drills (download it here).

In regards to game film, in this day and age of technology, most competitive youth soccer players have access to video footage of their games on a weekly basis. If this is something that you DO have – take advantage of it! If you are not, you are missing a HUGE opportunity to help yourself get better at soccer.

And we’re not talking about ‘watching’ it: we’re talking about studying it (here’s our FREE Game Analysis worksheet if you want our guided video analysis questions). Breaking it down objectively and learning from it. Analyze every tough you take. Analyze what you are doing: are you standing still, making runs, manipulating the space? How many opponent’s were you able to bypass with forward progressing passes? Break things down, get detailed.

For all types of reflection practices though, and with any new habit you are trying to build, you need to schedule in time for it, and put your phone away. Get rid of all the distractions. If you want to get ahead, if you want to level up, you need to give this your full and undivided attention in order to get the most from it.

Self-reflection in soccer WILL help you get ahead

The ultimate goal, when you start with self-reflection in soccer, is to inspire and motivate yourself to get REALLY, REALLY into learning and self-improvement. Because that relentless pursuit of wanting to KNOW more, wanting to BE more and wanting to GROW more is what will get you ahead and take you to the top of your game.

Self-reflection in soccer is an experience of exploring and learning more about yourself and the game. At a bare minimum, self-reflection in soccer helps you learn about both the tactical and technical elements of the game. And at its maximum – well, the skies the limit.

Hi everyone! I’m Jenn and I create content to help female soccer players and coaches maximize individual and team potential by developing healthy mindset skills. Join other subscribers and sign up for the newsletter for all my best tips and advice!

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Hi everyone!

I'm Jenn, a USSF C-licensed youth soccer coach, mental skills coach & founder here at Expand Your Game. I created this site because it is the site I needed when I was a soccer player.

About me: I am a former newspaper photojournalist who loves downtempo electronic music, guacamole and books of every sort. And of course soccer! On days off you can find me researching tiny farms in Portugal , tossing a frisbee for my dog, or tending to my growing collection of indoor plants.