Mental Toughness

What is Mental Toughness?

Mental Toughness refers to an individual’s resilience and inner drive to succeed – especially in challenging situations. It is a collection of values, attitudes, behaviours and emotions that enable a performer to persevere and overcome obstacles, adversity or pressure. Further it is the ability to maintain concentration, focus and motivation when things are going well to consistently achieve goals. There are some key characteristics of mentally tough athletes:
  • Remain calm and relaxed
  • Have lower anxiety levels
  • High self-belief
  • Inner confidence they will be successful
  • Remain unaffected by competition or adversity
Clough et al. (2002) identified the core components of mental toughness to be: 1) Control – individuals are capable of exerting influence and are confident working on complex tasks; 2) Challenge – seek challenges as an opportunity for self-development; 3) Commitment – have a high level of persistence and an ability to ‘stick at it’; and 4) Confidence – a strong self-belief and take setbacks in their stride.

Developing Mental Toughness

While we acknowledge that most endurance athletes are mentally tough anyway (just getting out to train and compete takes guts), there are always steps we can take to develop this. It is important to note that the development of mental toughness can take a reasonable period of time:
  • Develop a task orientated motivational climate – this is focusing on your own development and progress, removing comparisons with others. By focusing on yourself you create a more intrinsic motivation, which leads to: higher persistence at a task; willingness to try new things; greater self-belief; and lower levels of anxiety.
     
  • Identify good sources of social support – significant others can create an environment that allows performers maximum opportunity to benefit in terms of character, attitude and thinking. Coaches / training partners can: create challenging practice environments; model mental toughness qualities; be positive in attitude. While family / close friends can: encourage ownership and responsibility; adopt an appropriate supportive involvement.
     
  • Learn from sport specific and life events – spend some time reflecting on each event and establish a method for what you would do if you found yourself in that situation again. This does not necessarily mean you chose an alternate response, but you could identify more efficient ways to do what you already do.
     
  • Practice mental skills – use visualisation (guided visualisation through hypnosis is highly effective), positive self-talk, thought stopping techniques, goal setting, arousal / anxiety regulation processes to help develop mental toughness. The use of routines are highly recommended. (Note – we have covered some of these topics in previous newsletters and will discuss others in future newsletters)
     
Mental Toughness Activity

This is an approach that we have taken when working with professional athletes and sports teams. Spend a bit of time responding to each of the questions, as this will help you to develop your mental toughness ability. Revisit your answers regularly to aid development.
  1. Personal motivation for participation
    • Why do you participate in sport?
  1. Tough attitudes quotations
    • What are some quotes related to being mentally tough?
  1. Sources of self-belief
    • What makes you confident (in sport and daily life)?
  1. Favourite persister exercise
    • What have other people done when facing adversity?
  1. About yourself exercise
    • What can you do in challenging situations?

We have a purposefully designed MP3 download that aims to make you Mentally Tougher. Mental toughness also underpins our Peak Performance face-to-face package.