In the sports world, you would be hard
pressed to find any athletes or coaches who have not heard of the term: Mental
Toughness. It has been quoted many times over as a key aspect to top
performance and overall success. But what actually is mental toughness and how
can we train ourselves to improve this important characteristic?
By definition, Mental Toughness is a
personality characteristic that is defined through a multitude of aspects.
Resilience and confidence come to mind as two aspects of mental toughness,
however Jones, Hanton, and Connaughton listed 4 main components of mental
toughness with sub-components making up each one.
1.)
Attitude/Mindset –
self-confidence, and sense of cockiness, desire to win, and appetite for
success
2.)
Training – Resilience,
patience, discipline, self-control, positive outlook on training (especially
when the training gets tough), seeking out of opportunities to win against
teammates in practice
3.)
Competition – Love of pressure,
ability to cope with adversity, commitment to the end goal, fostering a “killer
instinct”, focus, and control
4.)
Post-Competition – good
sportsmanship, use of success and failure to improve themselves and their
performance for future competitions
From this clearer picture of what mental
toughness is made up of, we can start to pick out areas that can be focused on
when trying to promote, foster, and enhance mental toughness within ourselves
and others.
1.)
Building self-confidence /
Having a positive attitude
How can we build
self-confidence? Using positive self-talk is an important strategy for athletes
and coaches. You can either approach positive self-talk by creating a list of
positive personal statements (ex. I am quick and agile, I am strong and stable,
I have the ability to overcome any obstacle, etc.) or by creating a positive
word that you state when faced with a negative thought or situation (ex. After
a missed shot, a negative voice might start to be heard saying ‘you aren’t a
good shooter’, as soon as a negative thought appears, you say your positive
word/statement – ‘next play I will make my shot’)
2.)
Dedication and desire to win/be
successful
The desire to win and the
dedication that is needed in order to accomplish it, is mostly an internal
characteristic that individuals tend to either have or don’t have. By creating and
recording your goals/accomplishments and being reminded of why you are working
so hard (ex. Putting up a quote or image that is motivational in your room or in
the locker room) can help spur on that desire and maintain dedication.
3.)
Resilience
- One way to build resilience is
to constantly try and look at opportunities and challenges as ways for
improving. Athletes and coaches who lack a positive outlook from every situation
they find themselves in, can struggle with resilience. Coming off a bad workout
or bad loss? Try and learn as much as you can from it. What went wrong? How can
you prevent that from happening again? What were some areas of weakness that
you can focus on to improve? The same thought process goes along with winning
and successful situations. What went right? How can you increase the chances of
this happening again? What were some areas of strength and weakness that can be
improved upon?
- Another way of building
resilience is to put yourself in situations that can foster a mentally tough
and resilient response. From coaches introducing different game scenarios to
individuals trying to improve their fitness by adding challenges to their
workouts. Creating an atmosphere that is challenging can lead to a build-up of
personal resilience.
4.)
Focus
- If you tend to get distracted
and lose focus, fear not! You can train yourself (or your team) to re-focus and
stay concentrated on the task at hand. In order to learn how to stay focused,
you must first identify when you start to lose focus. When this happens,
utilize a key word or phrase to get your mind back on track. This can be
anything from ‘focus’ to ‘strong’ to ‘next play’…whatever word or phrase works
best for you. By constantly re-focusing yourself, you will start to strengthen
your focus and should notice your lapses in focus start to decrease.
- Another way of fostering a
strong focus is to use a journal. After practice sessions or competitions,
write down when you started to lose focus. You might find a pattern from this
technique that helps you to identify different times that your focus starts to
drift, allowing you to concentrate on different techniques during those times to stay focused.
5.)
Goal-setting
- Creating, monitoring, and
accomplishing your goals is a big part of fostering mental toughness. By having
a goal that you would like to achieve, planning out how you will go about
achieving it, and recording your progress can aid in the development and maintenance
of mental toughness. By utilizing goal-setting, you are also able to stay on
track and use it as a guide when you face challenges and adversity. Using
journals, goal tracking sheets, and vision boards/calendars are all techniques
that can be helpful in this technique of goal-setting.
7.)
Use of past outcomes to improve
future outcomes
- Similar to what was discussed
during resilience, using past outcomes to improve your future outcomes is a big
characteristic in those who are mentally tough. Whether it is a success or a
failure, mentally tough individuals are able to learn from them and move
forward in a positive way. How can you incorporate this into your journey?
Keeping a journal and utilizing self-assessment after performances is an easy
way to assess the situation, come up with some positives, create a plan of
attack, and monitor what is and is not working for you.
These areas and techniques for improving
mental toughness may seem hard to implement into your routine at first, but building positive and
efficient habits is one of the biggest steps of all for becoming mentally
tough. Once you conquer doing something that you don’t want to, in order to get
better, you have started your expedition to a tougher mentality – and that will
be your first step to success!
The picture below includes a poem written by James Casey and reminds me of how mentally tough individuals view their "hills, bruises, and storms", as experiences that make them stronger!
-Cat
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