Training the Invisible: Parkhurst on Confidence, Coaching, and Survival

Confidence is one of the strangest skills in sport. It was a recurring theme during last season for Atlanta United, from our coverage to comments from players and coaches. Everyone agrees it matters. Few agree on what it actually is.

For Michael Parkhurst, that confusion is where most young players begin to struggle.

“The first thing we say is confidence is a skill,” Parkhurst said on SDH AM. “It’s not you have it or you don’t. And it’s not if you have it, you always have it. It comes and goes. It can constantly be worked on. It constantly needs to be worked on. It’s always tested.”

Michael Parkhurst & his Beyond Goals Mentoring co-founder Greg Garza join SDH AM weekly on Fridays

Parkhurst now spends his post-playing career with Beyond Goals Mentoring, working with athletes who arrive at all points along the confidence spectrum. Some come in riding success. Many arrive after a period of doubt. A few, he admits, walk through the door with their “tank on empty.”

What he tries to teach them first is that confidence is not a personality trait. It is a process.

Before a player ever worries about goals, minutes, or status, Parkhurst believes confidence is built through preparation and belonging. Know the commitment. Show up consistently. Understand that progress is allowed to be slow.

“It’s okay to work your way up,” he said. “There are juniors who play on JV and that’s completely fine. The goal is to enjoy being part of a team and enjoy the experience.”

Where confidence most often breaks, Parkhurst says, is not in competition, but in environment.

Harsh coaching, isolation, and sustained losing all leave marks. For athletes trapped under difficult coaches, his advice is unusually precise.

“Take in the information and the guidance,” he said. “Leave the tone and the attitude and the way it’s coming out of their mouth. Don’t take that in. Just take the information.”

It is a survival skill, and not an easy one.

Those lessons come from experience. Parkhurst describes his time with the U-17 national team as “the worst experience of my life.”

“I hated it. It was brutal. My confidence was shot,” he said. “I was the new guy. I didn’t have a friend to pass the ball to. It crushed me.”

Later, as a professional in Denmark and Germany, he found himself playing reserve matches with teenagers in his mid-20s, trying to summon belief while his role shrank. As captain in Columbus in 2016, he carried the weight of losing seasons.

“You just have to put on the face like, ‘Hey, everything’s going to be all right,’ and keep going out there and keep losing,” he said.

From those moments came the tools he now teaches.

One is behavioral. Confidence can be rebuilt from the outside in.

“Sometimes you have to learn to fake it till you make it,” Parkhurst said. “Body language and how you speak can trick your brain into being a little bit more confident.”

Another is philosophical. Confidence must be kept between two dangers.

“No confidence is obviously a negative,” he said. “But too much confidence can be a negative too. That’s how you become complacent. That’s how you become cocky. Players don’t love playing with cocky players. They’re locker room killers.”

The goal, he tells his mentees, is not certainty. It is balance.

And the final lesson is the simplest, and the hardest.

Confidence, like fitness, never stays built on its own.

“It always needs to be worked on,” Parkhurst said. “It’s always tested.”

In that sense, the most important training most athletes never see is not on the field.

It is learning how to survive the moments when belief is gone — and how to build it back.