Two Basic Steps for Building Mental Toughness in Young Athletes
Mental toughness is something parents and coaches have to proactively build in young athletes. Although it may appear that some kids are born tough while others aren’t, research shows that this is only partially true.
Although scientist haven’t found conclusive evidence on the genetics of mental toughness, it is proven that both nature and nurture play a role. So it’s safe to assume that only about half of the factors that lead to mental toughness come from nature, while the other half come from nurture.
Given that we have no control over the nature of our children, we must focus on the nurture. Therefore, the only thing parents and coaches can do is to treat mental toughness as a muscle that gets stronger with training. With this in mind, it’s best to approach developing mental toughness as a process. A process that only requires two basic steps.
1) Progression
Developing mental toughness requires a progression that starts off easy, then increasingly gets harder. This requires patience.
Parents and coaches must accept that building a young athlete’s mental toughness won’t happen overnight. Making steady progress by allowing the athlete to overcome small, manageable challenges is critical.
For this reason, the athlete, parent and coach must approach the process of developing mental toughness with a crawl, walk, run mentality. With that said, no two athletes are the same just like no two babies learning to walk and run are the same. Some may figure it out fast while others take longer. It doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as progress is being made.
2) Repetition
To improve a person’s mental toughness, there must be consistency and repetition. Consistency removes uncertainty and leads to trust. Repetition is the key to learning and building instincts.
Coach John Wooden speaks on this best:
The four laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, and repetition. The goal is to create a correct habit that can be produced instinctively under great pressure.
To make sure this goal was achieved, I created eight laws of learning; namely, explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, and repetition.