How to Fuel Your Fire After a Setback in Soccer
Setbacks are an inevitability in sports. At some point in your career, you’re going to have to handle some form of disappointment, whether it’s getting injured, benched, or cut from the team. All of a sudden, your vision of the future just got a lot blurrier, dealing a big blow to your confidence and motivation.
Setbacks don’t feel good, but they 100% part of the process. In fact, this is the first steps towards recovering from a setback: accepting that they happen to everyone, and every successful athlete has overcome them to regain their momentum.
Embracing Setbacks as Normal
Setbacks are not just common, they are a normal part of being an athlete. When you have a setback, instead of thinking “This is bad,” it might be more helpful to think, “This means I’m experiencing what it’s really like to be an athlete.”
Of course, having that mindset is something that you have to develop – few are naturally able to think like that. It’s natural to think your path forward is closed and you’ll never achieve your goals.
What you have to do is reframe it – we, as humans, learn best from mistakes/failure/setbacks. While it’s seems great for those that didn’t experience the setback you did, the truth is they are now behind you because you have the opportunity to learn how to overcome it.
Overcoming Adversity is an Essential Skill
Accepting that setbacks are normal – and an opportunity to grow as a person and a soccer player – helps reduce the negativity attached to your experience. There’s still going to be a deep sense of disappointment, and that brings us to step two: understanding that overcoming adversity is among the most important skills an athlete can possess.
After our careers as professional soccer players, we can tell you that this skill is often the difference between a good player and a great player – it’s the difference between the players that don’t make it and those that do. Lots of players are fast, have a great touch, and score goals, but only a handful of them can continue scoring goals after a setback. That setback can be missing a sitter, getting yelled at by your coach, getting cut from the team, not making the team in the first place, or having to overcome an injury. If you want to achieve your goals in soccer, you ought to approach your setback like a true professional, and the next steps will show you how.
Setting Short-Term and Long-Term Goals After a Setback
Recovering from a setback becomes much easier when you know exactly what you have to do, as opposed to only having a vague idea of how to get back on your feet.
Let’s say your setback is an injury. In this case, your first priority should be getting fully fit. This seems like a logical first step towards returning to your previous level, right? So, instead of worrying how this injury destroyed your timeline to get to the next level of soccer, you can focus on what is in your control right now – achieving your first short-term goal of getting fit so you can get back to training and playing.
Once you’ve gotten your strength back, it’s time to set another short-term goal that’s conducive to your long-term goal. This is how great athletes overcome setbacks: They create a clear, step-by-step plan towards their long-term goal, taking on one short-term goal at a time.
It’s Hard Because It’s Important
Throughout our athletic careers, we’ve faced our share of setbacks, and we’ve repeatedly found that breaking down your recovery into short-term goals has a massive impact on your attitude and mental health. It makes you more in control of your future, and gets you on the right track as quickly as possible.
At Beyond Goals Mentoring, we specialize in guiding young athletes through this exact process. Overcoming setbacks isn’t easy, but it can be learned just like any other skill. We’re proud to harness our own experience to pass on this vital skill, so young athletes can use it time and time again. If you are struggling with any form of setback, let’s set up a mentoring session and start building a plan that truly works.
