Quick answer. Build confidence on the things a player controls, their preparation, effort and response, rather than on the scoreline, and teach the squad to read a mistake as information to act on rather than a verdict on their ability. When belief is anchored to those things, one loose pass is no longer enough to knock it over.
That is a fair starting point, but the coaches on The Hockey Site would tell you not to stop there, because confidence that lasts is trained on the pitch long before the mistake ever happens.
Start by separating confidence from results. Performance psychologist Katie Warriner, in her masterclass Confidence: a choice and a skill, frames confidence not as something a player is simply born with but as a choice and a skill that can be trained. If a player’s belief rises and falls with the scoreboard, a single error is all it takes to topple it. Warriner keeps the working definition simple: confidence is the honest answer to the question “can I do this?” The coaching task is to help players build that yes on ground that one mistake cannot wash away.
Normalise doubt instead of trying to ban it. Warriner is clear that confidence is not the absence of doubt, and that even the best players in the world carry it into big moments. Seen that way, a player who wobbles after a mistake is not broken, they are behaving like every performer does. When a squad is told plainly that nerves and doubts are a normal part of playing, a mistake stops being proof that “I should not be out here” and becomes a passing feeling that will pass. Pretending doubt away usually just makes it louder.
Reframe the mistake as information. Tin Matkovic, in Practical Approaches to Building Mental Toughness in Field Hockey Teams, keeps returning to one line from his own relegation run-in: every mistake is information. A turnover tells you something about a decision, a body position or a habit. Players who learn to read errors that way spend less energy on shame and more on the next action. Matkovic is candid that when results turn, players start to doubt and question the plan, which is exactly the moment when that reframe earns its keep.
Give players a plan they can fall back on. Part of what steadies Matkovic’s teams in the chaotic closing minutes is that the answers are, in his words, already pre-dealt. Players have rehearsed what to do in the situations that tend to come up, so under pressure they recognise the picture and act rather than freeze. Confidence that survives a mistake is often less about positive thinking and more about knowing there is a clear next job to do. A defined role and an obvious next action give a rattled player somewhere useful to put their attention.
Coach the response, not only the outcome. The Hockey Site piece Success and failure are both impostors, drawing on lessons from Coach K and several field hockey experts, argues that neither the good moment nor the bad one is the whole story, and that what matters is how a player approaches what comes next. If you only praise outcomes, you quietly teach players that their worth equals the result. Praising the response instead, the recovery run, the honest hands up, the quick reset after a lost ball, tells players that the thing you value is something they can repeat regardless of how the last action went.
Watch the language on the sideline. Confidence tends to collapse when the loudest voice after an error is a critical one. Coaches set the emotional tone of a team, and what gets noticed gets repeated. If mistakes are met with a groan while good recoveries pass without a word, players quietly learn to fear the ball and to hide in the safe option. Matkovic’s view that setbacks are opportunities to improve only holds true if the training and matchday environment actually treats them that way.
Build the bank before the pressure arrives. Because Warriner treats confidence as a trainable skill rather than a mood, it follows that it is built in the ordinary weeks, not summoned on matchday. Reps that stretch players just beyond comfort, honest feedback, and small wins that a player can point to all top up a store of belief they can draw on when a mistake comes. A player with that bank behind them can lose a ball and still trust that they belong, because their confidence was never resting on that one moment in the first place.
None of this is a script to copy and paste. It is a set of ideas to think through for your own group, your own age band and your own season, and the masterclasses below are where the coaches unpack them properly, with the messy real examples that make them usable.
Go more in depth here
Read next: Pressure is a matter of perception, Result vs process, The 4 most powerful words in talent development: “I believe in you”
More coaching questions: How do I help a field hockey player let go of a mistake and reset?, How do I motivate field hockey players who have checked out?, How do I keep juniors coming back without letting the standards slide?, How do I coach players who can’t beat a defender one on one?. All of them are in Field Hockey Coaching Questions.
The experts mentioned in this article
Katie WarrinerPerformance psychologist for team GB
Tin MatkovicCoach from Croatia, currently coaching in Germany
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