You Don’t Need More Confidence — You Need More Reps

I hear the same thing from football players almost every week. "I'm just feeling a bit low on confidence." "I feel like I'm playing without confidence." "I'm just not confident enough to do that."

Every week it's something, and somehow CONFIDENCE — or a lack of it — becomes the reason they aren't playing well.

And look, I understand it. We've all had times when we haven't felt particularly confident about what we're doing. But there's a problem with waiting for confidence before you're prepared to act. If you want to be confident, you need evidence that you can be successful. And you can only accumulate that evidence by DOING.

It's why I say confidence is a DOING word.

If you're a footballer and you're struggling to pick the ball up cleanly while running at speed, you don't become more confident by thinking about it. You don't become more confident by avoiding situations at training where you might fumble. And you definitely don't become more confident by waiting for Saturday afternoon and hoping that somehow this week will feel different.

You practise it. Get someone to roll the footy along the ground. Attack it at speed and pick it up. Maybe you fumble the first one. Go again. Maybe the next one isn't much better. Go again. Eventually you get one clean, then another, then five in a row.

Because now you're starting to accumulate something important: evidence. Evidence that you can actually do the thing you weren't confident doing. That's where confidence starts to come from. It doesn't magically arrive before the work; it grows because of the work.

The same thing happens in the gym all the time. Someone tells me they aren't confident doing strength training and, well...of course they're not. If you've never really done it before, why would you be confident?

You don't know where the J-hooks should go. You don't know how high to set the safeties. You're not sure how much the bar weighs. You don't really understand what weights you should choose, and you're worried that everyone else in the room somehow knows exactly what they're doing.

That's uncomfortable, but you come to the session anyway. Someone shows you how to set up your rack. You do your workout. You come back next week and need a little less help, and then you come back again.

A few weeks later you're walking in, setting up your own rack, loading your own bar and getting started without giving any of it much thought. What changed? You got some reps.

The same thing applies to meal preparation. People will tell me they're "no good at meal prep" or that they don't really know how to organise their food for the week. Again...why would you? If you've never consistently done it before, of course it's going to feel like a production.

How much chicken do I need? How much rice? How many containers? When am I supposed to cook everything? How long is this going to take?

So start. Make a few meals this Sunday. Maybe you cook too much rice. Maybe you don't cook enough chicken. Maybe halfway through Wednesday you realise you should have made another couple of meals. Great. You've learned something.

Do it again next Sunday, and the Sunday after that. Pretty soon you don't need to think much about it. You know what to buy, you know how much to cook and you know how long it's going to take. You've done it before. You've got evidence. You're confident.

Putting on your hand wraps before a boxing class is exactly the same. The first time someone hands you a pair of wraps, it can feel ridiculous. Where does this bit go? Around the wrist how many times? Between which fingers?

A few weeks later you're wrapping your hands while having a conversation and barely looking at what you're doing. Nobody sat you down and gave you some confidence. You got your reps.

This is where I think we sometimes get confidence completely backwards. We tell ourselves that once we feel confident, we'll do it. Once I'm confident enough, I'll join the strength class. Once I'm confident enough, I'll start running. Once I'm confident enough, I'll take the game on. Once I'm confident enough, I'll start preparing my meals.

But confidence isn't the starting point. Doing is the starting point.

And yes, that means you're probably going to feel uncomfortable for a while. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to ask questions that you think everyone else already knows the answer to. You're going to fumble the footy, put the J-hooks at the wrong height, make too much rice and wrap your hands in some completely ridiculous configuration that requires outside assistance to escape from.

That's okay, because the objective of those early reps isn't perfection. It's familiarity.

Every time you do the thing, you understand it a little better. Every time you understand it a little better, it becomes a little less intimidating. And every time it becomes a little less intimidating, you're more willing to do it again. That's how confidence grows.

Eventually something else happens as well. You stop spending so much energy worrying about HOW to do the thing and you can start concentrating on getting BETTER at it.

The footballer isn't worrying about whether they can pick the ball up anymore; now they're thinking about what they're going to do with it next. The person in the gym isn't worried about how to set up the bench press; they're thinking about adding another couple of kilos to the bar. Meal prep isn't some enormous Sunday project anymore. It's simply something they do.

That's when progress can really start to accelerate. But you don't get there by waiting until you feel ready. You get there by starting before you're confident.

Take a small step and get a rep. Then get another one. Make some mistakes, learn something and come back and do it again.

Because if there's something you're not sure how to do — or something you desperately want to get better at — the worst possible response is to avoid doing it because you're not confident.

You don't need to find more confidence first.

You need more reps.

Confidence is a DOING word.