Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

It doesn’t matter how often you talk to athletes about mental toughness, it will never be enough if you don’t teach them specifically what it means to be mentally tough. Moreover, lacking mental toughness is not a problem that solves itself. There are specific ingredients athletes need to build mental toughness.

Yes, sometimes life randomly works out in a way that allows these ingredients to naturally develop. However, depending on random luck is not something athletes should ever count on. Instead, athletes must become self-aware of their situation and environment to be intentional about the development of their mental toughness.

This starts with the four ingredients psychologists Sheldon Hanton, Graham Jones, and Declan Connaughton define in their research “A Framework of Mental Toughness in the World’s Best Performers“.

Ingredient #1 for Mental Toughness: Mindset

Carol S. Dweck defines mindset in her preeminent book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success as the connection between how you think and how you behave. Dweck explains that how you think is a product of the “views you adopt” which then define your mindset. Then as your mindset leads to choices, these choices lead to behaviors, and those behaviors dictate how you lead your life.  For athletes, this means their mindset views dictate how mentally tough they are when they play sports.

The research of Hanton, Jones, and Connaughton suggest that athletes who are mentally tough have a different mindset than everyone else. Moreover, these differences have 7 attributes.

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.

Ingredient #2 for Mental Toughness: Training

The only way to be mentally tough is to do mentally tough things. Unquestionably, this must start with an athlete’s training. The research of Hanton, Jones, and Connaughton suggest that athletes who are mentally tough train differently than everyone else. Moreover, these differences have 6 attributes.

1. The ability to use a long term “why” to motivate themselves through difficulties, pain and fatigue when training. “Mentally tough performers acknowledge that they are tired but realize and remind themselves that if they are to achieve their goal they have to get back in the gym and work.“
2. Intense focus on specific tasks and performance goals with realistic deadlines for achieving, while not wasting any “time wishing for the impossible or the unrealistic.”
3. Maintaining a “strong sense of independence in training” i.e., owning the process and accepting responsibility for their destiny. “Not relying on the coach or other people.“
4. The ability to use adverse training environments to their advantage and can get the best out of themselves even in a bad training situation.
5. Uncanny ability to embrace training pain. Derives “pleasure from being able to give absolutely everything.”
6. Treats everything like a competition. Puts maximum effort into winning every warm-up, drill, rep, and scrimmage. Treats everything like it’s important. “They thrive on opportunities of beating other people and are not afraid to put themselves on the line.”

Ingredient #3 for Mental Toughness: Competition

Hanton, Jones, and Connaughton provide a critical insight on the mindset of mentally tough athletes on competition day. In contrast with other athletes who dread pressure, mentally tough athletes love the pressure of competition. In fact, mentally tough athletes love every minute the pressure that competition day provides.

The researchers sum up the mindset of a mentally tough athletes on competition day as follows:

The mentally tough performer is eager to be there and enjoys everything about the competition… The build up… The prelims, the waiting, the final… This is the only place he wants to be… “This is what I’m here for.”

In addition, having this mindset was found by the researchers to be the #1 factor for being a mentally tough competitor. Simply stated, mentally tough athletes love the things other athletes loathe. When everyone else is complaining, mentally tough athletes are having the time of their life.

Ingredient #4 for Mental Toughness: Post-Competition

Mental toughness in the post-competition phase amounts to the capacity to learn from failure and put success into perspective. Hanton, Jones, and Connaughton explain that mentally tough athletes use both success and failure as motivation “to raise the level of their performance”.

When it comes to learning from failure, it’s easier said than done. Most athletes give the idea of learning from failure a lot of lip service without backing it up. Mentally tough athletes tune-in to the specific details of failure and separate their ego from the causes of failure. Then, they use this laser like focus to adjust how they train to address the specific causes of failure and apply what they learn in future performances.

When it comes to success in the post competition phase, mentally tough athletes don’t let themselves get the big head. Although they do celebrate their victories, these celebrations are short, and they don’t let celebrating setback or impede progress. Moreover, they don’t let winning distract them as they understand that just because they won doesn’t mean they did their best. If mistakes were made, they address those mistakes.

Finally, Hanton, Jones, and Connaughton explain that mentally tough athletes “know how to handle the pressure of succeeding and the extra pressure that success adds to future performances “. They don’t fear the pressure of fame, rewards, and expectations, instead they keep a level head and handle the pressure just as they would handle an opponent or challenge they must overcome to achieve their goals.