Ask players where they get their confidence from and the most common answer is results, which sets up a chicken-and-egg problem. Warriner’s exercise is to list five sources of your confidence, then count how many are actually within your control. Selection, scores and a coach’s feedback are wobbly foundations; preparation, attitude and living true to your values give you confidence you can enjoy regularly. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Overconfidence is often masked under-confidence, Warriner argues: armour someone puts on because they do not feel good enough as they are, and it breaks connection with teammates. Her response is to help players be honest about weaknesses, with the coach role-modelling that first. Where the overconfidence is genuine, a lack of self-awareness, she puts facts and evidence on the table rather than opinions, and looks for the context behind the behaviour instead of judging it. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Visualising an action uses the same part of the brain as performing it, brain imaging shows, just at lower intensity. Warriner cites studies where imagined piano practice matched physical practice for accuracy after three days, and imagined exercise built 22 per cent muscle strength against 30 for the real thing. She calls it a massively untapped area for hockey, from closed skills to rehearsing calm responses to umpires. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Building confidence once is like brushing your teeth once, Warriner says: the job is done in that moment, but life keeps undoing it, so the techniques need regular, disciplined practice until they become automatic. She finds it odd that teams employ full-time physios and strength coaches yet usually a part-time psychologist, when the mind goes everywhere with the player, into the gym, the video room and the debrief. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Her most important work, Warriner says, is with the head coach, because a burnt-out coach affects performance and mental health across the whole squad. But she pushes back on the idea that a psychologist should work only through the coach: players bring personal topics that need confidential conversations, and psychologists train for over eight years to handle them. The answer is both, not either. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
A good goalkeeper mantra has three parts, Warriner says: a reference to your strengths, a physical anchor such as gripping the stick or feeling your feet on the floor, and something calming. Counterintuitively, she finds most goalkeepers are more at risk of being over-pumped than flat, so a line that recalls why they play the game often produces cleaner, more clinical focus than a hype phrase. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Winning a tournament is a dream goal, something you want but cannot fully control. Warriner argues for measuring success on performance factors closer to your control, commitment, preparation, living your values, so that the answer to the question ‘can I do it?’ is almost always yes. That shift changes what players focus on, which improves their decisions and, in turn, the performance itself. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Clear is kind, is how Warriner frames it. Tough feedback survives when the culture is set first: senior players show they genuinely care about the junior ones, which earns them the room to be blunt, and after any rupture comes a repair, where both sides talk through the impact. In-game there is no time to frame messages carefully, so relationships need enough robustness to absorb the odd harsh delivery. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Rather than relying on coaches or teammates for reassurance, the Olympic drag flicker Warriner introduces here built her own evidence. She tracked her corner percentages on a grid, did 50 drag flicks three or four times a week, then kept the printed spreadsheets by her bed at the Games. Confidence, in her words, comes from the work you have done before, not from other people telling you how good you are. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Asked whether confidence follows competence, Warriner agrees without hesitation: doing the work comes first, and confidence grows out of it. That is why she treats fear of failure as something coaches need to actively remove, because players only build competence by taking action, and things are almost never as bad in reality as our minds predict. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
You have around 50,000 thoughts a day, and roughly 90 per cent of them you never chose; they come from a primitive part of the brain that thinks without permission. Warriner’s point is that you cannot stop thoughts, but you can choose which ones you pay attention to and act on. Thoughts are stories, not facts, so hold them like passing weather rather than fighting every negative one. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.
Feelings come and go and cannot be controlled, so Warriner suggests treating confidence as a behaviour instead. Break down what you look like at your best, on the ball, off the ball, in huddles, then choose to behave that way regardless of how you feel. The behaviours are far more within your control, and the feelings often follow anyway. Watch the full masterclass: Confidence: a choice and a skill.