Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Mental flexibility is a mindset concept that appears complex at first but is straightforward once you break it down. It’s something you want to understand because of the benefits you get from learning the thought process behind it. What’s more, just like flexibility in general, you can only get these benefits by stretching specific focus areas.

The focus areas one must stretch to become mentally flexible depend on how one naturally focuses their thinking. In general, the way people focus their thinking is classified in to one of four categories.

1. Internally on themself, around a broad set of details
2. Internally on themself, around a few details
3. Externally on their environment, around a broad set of details
4. Externally on their environment, around a few details.

Each one of these categories of thinking has strengths and weaknesses as well as a stereotypical behavior pattern. I broke down these details further from the perspective of four types of thinking athletes in this article.

With mental flexibility the idea is to not allow yourself to only focus your thinking in just one of these categories. For example, a good marathoner is very good at focusing internally on a few details that matter. Typically, this will be their breathing, calorie intake, and pace. However, if the weather changes unexpectedly can they adjust? Are they mentally flexible enough to adapt to the new environment while keeping their breathing, calories, and pace on track?

This ability to continue to excel while shifting across focus areas is the hallmark of mental flexibility. This means shifting between an internal and external focus seamlessly while zooming in and out on details. This requires repetitions in specific types of situational practice for improvement. Therefore, metal flexibility is one of those strategic muscle memories that are a true competitive advantage.