For some reason lately I have been hearing a lot about
mental toughness. Several times I have heard people say that the workout
develops mental toughness. Frankly I am not sure what mental toughness is. It
is certainly easy to talk about, but is it really something you need to
emphasize? Maybe this is a reaction to my own undistinguished football career
because I was labeled as not being “mentally tough.” Even back then I
questioned it. The players who were supposed to be mentally tough were the same
ones who missed assignments, dropped passes and could not seem to get it done
under pressure, but they were always screaming and hollering. I guess I wonder
why this concept persists. I know that any athlete who perseveres through our
training programs is physically prepared. They will also be mentally prepared because
that is an emphasis. I emphasize being mindful. I want them fully engaged and committed
to the training, the practice or the game. You derive mental strength from
physical preparation. Excelling in sport and in life is about handling
pressure, learning from your mistakes, being willing to take risks and deal
with the consequences. Mental toughness is a myth, a sports writers cliché. I
want the athlete who is consistent and shows up every day ready to “win the
workout.”
8 Comments
Jerimiah
That’s funny Vern, because what you describe at the end is what I would define as mental toughness. The willingness to be consistant and persistant is what I would define as mental toughness. I think you can fail in the sense of not hitting a goal weight on a lift or not making a goal time on a run, and still be mentally tough, but I also don’t understand how you can not “get it done” and still be called mentally tough. For me mentally tough is showing up and getting it done, when you don’t feel like getting it done, when you feel like giving up.
Jonathan Hewitt
If you don’t believe mental toughness exists or is real just talk to a P.O.W. That’ll change your mind.
Harry Marra
Mental toughness can easily be defined as a complete & honest willingness to be successful. Whether it be winning a game, getting a PB, beating your best mark in practice say by a foot on your last attempt, etc. etc.
I coach an 8300+ decathlete, who happens to be a pretty good athlete, BUT more important, he is a GREAT Competitor. He HONESTLY is never fulfilled by a PB, whether in pracrtice or in a meet. Being happy with a PB result leads him to believing that that is the best he can do.
Mental toughness is never beating yourself in a competition…oh yea, someday someone will come along and beat the snot out of you in some skill / competition. Mental Toughness is RESPONDING with the best performance of your life, even if the other guys mark is better!
Coach Marra
adam moss
Great point Coach. we do talk about it a lot with our kids and your points and the folks who have commented are right on. I like what you said with regards to the football coaches and tough ness yet missing assignements. to me it is all about how you respond to adversity. Some workouts are tough for a variety of reasons, how do you respond, do you push yourself on those tough days to do your best. I love this thought with regards to my throwers. I asked them yesterday, why do you get 3 throws in preliminaries..they looked at me funny. We are human and we will error, then what will we do, will we trust our training and coaching and resolve or will we get caught in the moment and lose our faith and our belief in ourselves and our ability. In football we see it most when things don’t go our atheltes way. A bad play, the other teams scores first, we make a mistake, we seem to get that “here we go again” feeling… Since I first got into teaching the one phrase that meant the most to me that came from one of my instructors was success breeds success. Being mentally tough is trusting in yourself your coaches, your success and not running away from a challenging not quitting because it got hard or didn’t go the way you wanted it to…thanks for letting me comment. You are the best coach and I am thankful everyday for knowing you and being able to learn from you
Charles
Well, let me speak from some experience. Maybe mental “toughness” is not a great term; mental “resilience” might be more accurate and helpful in the context of training.
Winning is different from competing, and the ability to win is strongly affected by internal psychological processes.
I speak from some experience. I coached a elite-level volleyball player for many years (she also happened to be my wife). Physically, she could play with anyone. But mentally she would break down at crucial moments.
A coach friend of ours, Tom Kurz, recommended a set of tapes that were designed to train the mind of athletes for competition. She applied herself to that course, and six months later she won the final game of the final match of the Olympic trials in beach volleyball and was on the U.S. Olympic team in 1996. She attributes that success to the mental training and to the confidence it gave her.
Now sure, we can say that there was a placebo effect there, and we’d need a controlled study to make sure.
I would say you CAN acquire mental resilience from physical training, and the best training programs also have a psychological component. But there are also specific, competition-related mental skills that can take that resilience one step further, and allow you to compete at the same physical and skill level as psychological stress increases. And I think those skills can be specifically trained separately from physical training.
And I have seen many, many times when a more mentally resilient athlete with modest physical skills will beat a more physically-gifted and trained athlete who doesn’t know how to control their emotions and mind.
josh
Mental toughness means showing up and training even if you really don’t want to do it today. Mental toughness means doing also the last set and not only the fun easy first ones. Mental toughness means to deliver in competition no matter what distractions are there. Mental toughness means to keep going on the last 100m of the 400. Mental toughness means to give it all you’ve got. Always.
Al Fichera
Mental Toughness is not fully understood because it is looked at as a “Mind State”. Rather Vern has done a good job of defining it as “Being Mindful”… much more like a verb that is momentary only.
Life is series of moments. My experience is that you have a choice to either be mindful or mindless in each moment of your life.
Mindful is just another word for awareness and it is something we all carry, but take for granted. It is like the gold in our pockets that we do not see.
Becoming mindful or aware is trainable. Athletes would be better served to practice mindfulness or awareness vs. defining aggregate words like mental toughness.
Those interested in practicing this form of training should consider the 2,500 year old tradition of mindfulness training outlined by the Buddha.
Beating oneself up that thinking they “just weren’t or aren’t mentally tough enough” is unskillful and reflects ignorance.
Just like the body, the mind can be observed and understood. Awareness can only enhance the performance of any committed athlete.
Scott
I would think that mental toughness is different from.
1. Mental Power/force
2. Mental skill/agility
3. Mental weakness (my specialty)
4. Mental discipline/resoluteness
Toughness implies being able to withstand damage. Toughness is what you develop from lots of experience with stress in a non-life threatening environment. Toughness is often the opposite of sensitive. Do you train Mental Sensitivity?
Sometimes the expression Mental Toughness is simply used to mean having an Aggressive mentality, an aggressive approach to engagements.