Developing mental skills in youth athletes.
Abstract
Youth sport coaches have an incredibly complex and challenging role. The physical developmental changes that youth and adolescents go through can seemingly happen overnight. It is not surprising, therefore, that coaches spend most of their time thinking about how to help players with their physical skills. However, the significant developmental changes (e.g. cognitive, social, and emotional) that are happening just below the surface are equally as important and may be the key to an athlete improving. The purpose of this article is to describe how coaches can incorporate strategies for developing mental skills in a youth sport setting. Three areas, cognitive, social, and emotional development, are discussed with specific strategies for how to coach when working with youth across various sport settings. In considering each of these areas of development, critical milestones are highlighted with a short discussion of how those milestones might impact youth sport coaching. The article also provides suggestions on how to teach mental skills to youth. Finally, a season-long planning tool for incorporating mental skills into training is discussed. Ultimately, understanding how athlete development should impact your coaching and how you can train mental skills are two areas that can improve your effectiveness as a coach.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Goal setting encourages young athletes to identify their progress against performance standards.
“Goal setting encourages young athletes to identify their progress against performance standards (Thompson and Hilliard, 2021).”
From Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with Psychological Skills Training (PST): a case study (2025) · cites this paper as Thompson and Hilliard, 2021
The demands placed on children in the youth-sport setting are enormous given their limited cognitive, social, and emotional capacity.
“Arguably, the demands placed on children in the youth-sport setting are enormous given their limited cognitive, social, and emotional capacity (Thompson and Hilliard, 2021).”
From Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with Psychological Skills Training (PST): a case study (2025) · cites this paper as Thompson and Hilliard, 2021
Cites
The origins of intelligence in children.
Piaget, J. (1952) · doi:10.1037/11494-000 · Cited by 10,687 · see citing works
Self-Talk and Sports Performance: A Meta-Analysis
Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691611413136 · Cited by 361 · see citing works
Naegele, K. D., Lifton, R. J., & 中尾, 清. (1964) · 松柏社 eBooks · Cited by 263 · see citing works
Exercise imagery: Its nature and measurement.
Hausenblas, H. A., Hall, C. R., Rodgers, W. M., & Munroe, K. J. (1999) · Journal of Applied Sport Psychology · doi:10.1080/10413209908404198 · Cited by 147 · see citing works
The effect of kinesthetic imagery on the sport confidence of flat-race horse jockeys.
Callow, N., & Waters, A. (2005) · Psychology of Sport and Exercise · doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2004.08.001 · Cited by 122 · see citing works
Enhancing forehand acquisition in table tennis: The role of mental practice.
Caliari, P. (2008) · Journal of Applied Sport Psychology · doi:10.1080/10413200701790533 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Wood, S., & Turner, M. J. (2025) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1617548 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Arguably, the demands placed on children in the youth-sport setting are enormous given their limited cognitive, social, and emotional capacity (Thompson and Hilliard, 2021).”
- Authors
- Thompson, M., & Hilliard, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Southern Mississippi (US)
- ORCID
- Thompson, Melissa
- Venue
- Strategies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-05-03
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 23-28
- ISSN
- 0892-4562 (ISSN-L)
- 2168-3778
- OpenAlex
- W3157578895
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 0.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Strategies (publishedVersion)
- Aquila Digital Community (University of Southern Mississippi) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation › Sports and Physical Education Research
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Youth Development and Social Support
- Keywords
- mental training, youth sports coaching, athlete development, cognitive development, social development (developmental psychology), emotional development, developmental milestones, coaching methods
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
