Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Let’s say an athlete on the team is having trouble with their mental toughness when things get hard in practice. The athlete knows this, their teammates know this, and the coach knows this. Basically, it’s no secret that the athlete has a problem with mental toughness. Moreover, the coach doesn’t want this problem spilling over and impacting the athlete’s performance when it counts against tough competition.

So, what does the coach do? Most coaches will instinctively have a talk with the athlete and tell the athlete they need to be mentally tougher. The coach emphasizes the importance of mental toughness and tells the athlete that they have the talent to be great, but they will never reach their potential while they have this problem. The coach ends by saying the only thing holding the athlete back from being one of the best is their mental toughness. Boom…That’s it. A “heart felt” talk that does absolutely nothing to solve the problem except reinforce what the athlete already knows.

As the season goes on, the coach continues to beat this athlete up over their mental toughness issue. The coach reminds the athlete every practice about it, and is extra hard on the athlete to try to build their mental toughness by breaking them mentally every chance they get. The coach thinks this is the way. Breaking an athlete down is the best way to then build them back up tougher.

The mistake here is that coach doesn’t have a plan to actually build the athlete back up. Breaking an athlete down is easy. Coaches do this all the time by yelling, adding extra conditioning, taking away playing time, etc.

However, when it comes to building a broken athlete back up, coaches are generally uncertain of what to do.

How to Build an Athlete Up to be Mentally Tougher

My first suggestion for coaches is not to break an athlete down as traditionally done by old school coaches. While it may be easier to tear down an old house and build a new house when the foundation is faulty, this is not the case with athletes and it’s not the coach’s job to make that call anyway. Tearing down an athlete at their foundation is risky at best. It’s more likely that athlete will quit before they grow mentally tougher.

A better alternative is to start by building the athlete up with positivity. Breaking an athlete down teaches the athlete to have negative self-talk, building them up teaches them to have positive self-talk.

This may or may not be obvious, but research shows those who constantly speak negativity into their life have more negative outcomes than others. All athletes think and whisper out loud messages to themselves. Correspondingly, athletes who struggle with mental toughness have a bad habit of whispering negative messages to themselves. Therefore, if a coach reinforces those negative messages by scolding them when they struggle as a tool to make them tougher, the opposite happens. It just makes them mentally weaker and causes their performance to decrease.

If an athlete is having an obvious mental toughness issue, unquestionably this is where coaches must start. Negative habits can only be broken by quickly replacing them with new positive habits.

Coaches must make sure they are not reinforcing an athlete’s negative self-talk by telling them things like:

• “stop being so weak“
• “don’t go out there and choke this time“
• “you always quit when things get hard“
• “you have to toughen up“
• “this is why you lose tough matches”
• “why are you always so out of shape”
• “you’re setting a bad example for your teammates”
• “stop quitting on yourself”

If a coach keeps saying things like this, there isn’t much that can be done until this stops. The mind is not wired to turn negative self-talk into anything but negativity. The best thing a coach can do when an athlete is struggling is to speak the reverse:

• “You got this, you’re stronger than you think“
• “You’ve been here before, there is no pressure“
• “This isn’t hard, this is your chance to get better“
• “One step at a time, you’re doing great“
• “Your teammates believe in you, and I believe in you”
• “When you’re done, you are going to appreciate all this hard work”
• “You are in better shape today than you were yesterday, I can see your progress”

Coaches must stay consistent and remain patient with the process of building an athlete up. It’s not that training needs to get easier. As it doesn’t. The training process to get an athlete to perform at their best is what it is. What must change is the mental side of attacking that training. This must be built internally with positive self-talk from within the athlete and externally with positive affirmations from the coach, parents, and teammates.

To sum this up, I highly recommend watching the clip below of the late great sports psychologist Trevor Moawad explaining the power of negativity vs. positivity in sports. If a coach truly wants to help an athlete who is struggling with mental toughness, this video is a must watch.