Tip of the Month - March 2021
Coach Monika Says…
Steps to Mental Toughness
Series I
This and the next monthly Series deal with the mental challenges athletes face, performance anxiety, self-compassion, achieving mental toughness, and understanding the ‘Zone’ in sport performance. I partially adapted and modified parts of this article from the website Mental Training, Inc. (MTI).
MTI provides customized mental training and sports psychology for coaches, athletes, parents, and business professionals of all ages and skill levels. The focus is on mental skills to prevent performance slumps, blocks, and/or fears so athletes and people can develop mental toughness and achieve peak performance.
Clough & Strycharczyk (2002) define mental strength or toughness as…
…The capacity of an athlete to deal effectively with stressors, pressures and challenges to the best of their ability, irrespective of the circumstances in which they find themselves (2002)…
Building mental strength is fundamental to living the best life just as we train in the gym to build muscles athletes have to develop mental health through the use of mental tools and techniques. Optimal mental health helps us to live a life that we love, have meaningful social connections, and positive self-esteem. It also aids in the ability to take risks, try new things, and cope with any difficult situations that life may throw at us.
According to MTI, 10,000 athletes were asked: “Raise your hand if mental toughness is critical for your future success.” All hands went up. When asked: “Keep your hands up if you train mentally each day” … All hands went down! “We don’t know what to do”… Is that not surprising?
At the highest level of performance with all factors equal (physical, technical, etc.), the difference in winning is emotional stability, attitude, and mental toughness. However, coaches are so focused on physical preparation, conditioning, training methods, and strategies but not on daily mental training! Isn’t that amazing!
MTI psychology experts suggest the following 5 steps to achieve mental toughness:
Efficient Technique
No matter the sport, mental toughness always starts with a strong work ethic and smart coaching.
2. Fitness and Health
If an athlete becomes or is fatigued, injured, or sick, mental toughness becomes very difficult.
3. Build 3-Core Components
Practice daily the skills of (a) relaxation; (b) mindfulness; and (c) imagery to improve awareness.
4. Learn to Control Mental States
Top performers know how to change their thoughts to get calm, confident, carefree, focused, and motivated.
5. Mental Mastery
The final steps involve testing awareness and mental skills to get the feedback necessary for improvement so the athlete is able to perform their best when it matters most.
Requires Great Concentration and Focus!
Additional Recommendations cited in various sources:
Convince yourself things do not go wrong
Sleep on negative emotions
Focus on a goal, not a dream
Can you deal with pain?
Break the comfort zone regularly
The term “Resilience,” commonly used in relation to positive mental health, is actually borrowed from engineering, which refers to the ability of an ‘object to spring back into shape.’ In the same way, such an object requires strength and flexibility in order to bounce back, so too does the individual require these characteristics to be mentally resilient because to be mentally tough one has to possess some degree of resilience. However, not all resilient individuals are necessarily mentally tough. A metaphor for resilience would be the image of a mountain, while mental toughness might be the strategies to climb that mountain. According to Clough and Strycharczyk (2015), techniques for developing mental toughness revolve around five themes:
Positive Thinking
Anxiety Control
Visualization
Goal Setting
Attention Control
I have argued for decades that mental training needs to be integrated as early as possible when developing athletes. We started that approach with young children in our gymnastics and swim club as early as 6-years of age. They developed mental pictures (metaphors) with the guidance of coaches, created ‘cue’ words for given skills in verbal and written format, and they drew pictures to hang on their bedroom wall. We worked on focus and concentration during lesson and/or training sessions with various physical and technical skills and gymnastic-type activities, which required a high level of concentration. We emphasized the concept ‘mind over body’ not only in their sport activities but also in their academic work by posing questions about how attention would help when reading or doing math homework. This type of mental training develops the capacity for athletes, later on, to be introduced and then taught the ‘Zen’ state for competition.
No matter the sport, mental toughness always starts with a strong work ethic and holistic coaching, meaning a coach who understands the importance of including mental aspects and wellness in their daily approach. This can be taught through a specific sport or other activities. I have always preferred to work with athletes who are less ‘talented’ but demonstrate their willingness to learn and tough it out no matter the challenges.
It is important to stay physically, emotionally, and mentally fit. Fatigue and/or emotional problems (anxiety, depression, etc.) will drain the energy level, increase chances of injury or sickness (immune issues, mononucleosis), and makes remaining ‘mentally tough’ very difficult.
Building a core of mental skills becomes critical. Skills of progressive relaxation, mindfulness, imagery, and visualization need to be taught, which needs to be included in the programming and be practiced daily so athletes are able to develop bodily and mental awareness, and are able to recognize when “things go astray.”
As the final step, athletes need to be given ample opportunities to test their mental training to receive feedback so they can improve mental lapses or gaps so that they can improve their performance when it really matters (i.e. real competition).
References:
Clough, P., & Strycharczyk, D. (2015) (2nd ed.). Developing Mental Toughness: Coaching Strategies to Improve Performance, Resilience and Wellbeing. London, UK: Kogan Page.
Mental Training Inc. (MTI). Retrieved February 27, 2021, from https//MentalTraingInc.com Optimal thinking. Champion results.
Retrieved March 8, 2021, from http://www.sportpsychologytoday.com/sport-psychology-for-coaches /understand-the-zone-understand-sport/attachment/sports_psychology_soccer/
Retrieved March 8, 20121, from https://www.mentaltoughness.partners/developing-mental-toughness-peter-clough-doug-strycharczyk
Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://positivepsychology.com/mentally-strong/