Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Training pain is the pain you experience when you are training to push yourself beyond your current limitations. The purpose of this pain is to condition the body to tolerate extreme fatigue, thousands of hours of repetition, performing while hurt, injury recovery, and learning from failure, among other things. As you condition your body your pain tolerance increases which ultimately improves performance. For elite athletes, training pain is not part of the process; it is the process.

Every athlete working to do something they’ve never done before must face pain head on. There is no magic pill or special gene that makes facing pain easier. It’s simply a choice. A choice to endure whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, whenever it’s required, without complaining.

Average athletes thinks there is some magical difference between how they feel pain and how elite athletes feel pain. Average athletes think elite athletes feel less pain when doing the same work as them. However, whether it’s conditioning, strength training, or sheer will power to grit out a win in the face of exhaustion, average athletes experience pain the same way elite athletes experience pain. Every single athlete who trains at a high level feels pain in their head, chest, lungs, legs, arms, back, knees, ankles, and feet. Every single athlete feels the pain of boredom, discipline, sacrifice, persistence, and consistency.

However, the difference between the average athlete and the elite athlete is their mindset. Average athletes hate pain, see it as their enemy, fears it, and lets pain beat them. On the other hand, elite athletes learn to love pain, accept it, embrace it, and use it to get better.

Simply stated, elite athletes are mentally tough and it’s this mental toughness that allows elite athletes to embrace pain better than average athletes.

What Gives Elite Athletes the Mental Toughness to Embrace Pain

There are specific attributes that elite athletes have that give them the mental toughness to embrace pain. Sport psychologists Sheldon Hanton, Graham Jones, and Declan Connaughton break down these attributes in their research “A Framework of Mental Toughness in the World’s Best Performers“. Their research suggest that these attributes include:

1. An unshakable self-belief as a result of total awareness of how you got to where you are now.
2. An inner arrogance that makes you believe that you can achieve anything you set your mind to.
3. The belief that you can punch through any obstacle people put in your way.
4. Believing that your desire or hunger will ultimately result in your fulfilling your potential.
5. Refusing to be swayed by short-term gains (financial, performance) that will jeopardize the achievement of long-term goals.
6. Ensuring that achievement of your sport’s goal is the number-one priority in your life.
7. Recognizing the importance of knowing when to switch on and off from your sport.

Unquestionably, the ability to love pain, accept it, embrace it, and use it to get better is something parents and coaches must proactively build in athletes. By and large, focusing on developing these seven areas of an athlete’s mindset belief system, and attitude is an ideal way to start this proactive process.