Building Mental Toughness: Strategies for Success

Mental Toughness (MT) is a concept that has long been written and talked about, but it is also an idea often misunderstood.

Here is a practical framework that categorizes Mental Toughness attributes into four pillars: Motivation, Coping with pressure, Concentration, and Confidence.

According to research, MT is both caught via environmental influence and taught through training.

Let’s first define the different attributes of MT. Then, we will look at how environment can promote those qualities, and lastly how to train those four skills.

Motivation

It combines the following characteristics: a strong desire for success, a willingness to push yourself, be persistent and work hard, setting difficult goals yet attainable, and bouncing back from performance setbacks.

Create a practice environment where athletes are exposed to successful experiences, at times in a tough environment, and work on intrinsic / extrinsic motivation. Make a personal commitment to a lifestyle, and not solely the pursuit of a prize such as money, competition result or social recognition.

Self-confidence

An athlete’s belief to possess the abilities to achieve his/her goals. This strong belief in yourself allows to take educated risks, learn from criticism, control unwanted thoughts and feelings, with a certainty that good things will happen in the future.

One of the most important and most fragile attributes.

Therefore, finding ways to build it and maintain it is very important for successful performance, which requires a positive environment and lots of support (encouragement, positive and instructional feedback). Invest in quality physical preparation which is often linked with positive psychological characteristics such as confidence.

Training and enhancing self-belief appear to be linked with strategies such as modeling/watching others and recalling previous successful actions.

Imagery and modeling both have a demonstrated positive impact on improving performance and enhancing mental skills. Simply watch others successful athletes (see “Social Facilitation Theory”).

Attentional Focus

Center attention on the relevant cues in your surroundings, maintain focus despite distractions, and concentrate on your priorities. Don’t forget to stay in the moment, see the positives and the process. Being able to remain fully focused especially when faced with adversity is consequential.

It is important that attentional focus is self-monitored, and that competition is simulated during practice environment. Setting up practice that encourage athletes to make quick decision. And over-learning skills in practice can enable athletes to make complicated decisions quickly during competition.

There are many strategies to train attention focus (competition plans, established routines, negative though stopping), self-talk statements. A common cause of attentional problems is projection in the past/future. So, it is helpful to develop a set of verbal and positive cues, either motivational or instructional, to keep your mind focused on the present task.

Coping with Pressure

This last pillar relates to managing your emotions and dealing with pressure, in other words how to perform under pressure by controlling the amount and nature of stress experienced: coping effectively with adversity, accepting that anxiety is inevitable, staying calm. Mentally tough athletes do not merely deal with pressure but thrive on it.

Be exposed to competitive stressors in your practice environment so you can learn to enjoy pressure. Be prepared to perform under fatigue, constraint of recuperation time, new environment and training partners, etc.

Train with cognitive restructuring, a technique that can help counter negative thoughts as well as expectations and turn them into positives through a process of rationalization.

Familiarize yourself with acceptance and mindfulness strategies, too.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262665458_Mental_toughness_What_is_it_and_how_to_build_it