What is Mental Toughness in Sports?
What is mental toughness in sports? How can it help you?
Mental toughness is:
- the ability to cope with adversity
- keep your confidence high
- be focused
- stay composed in competition
Mental toughness gives athletes the ability to perform to their highest potential under the most stressful conditions or important competitions.
Unfortunately many athletes have experiences similar to this athlete…
“I have been competing in multiple sports since I was young. I am pretty athletic and have great practices but I get so nervous before games…
Especially when a lot is riding on the game, like the playoffs. I wish I had more mental toughness, but I have no idea how to obtain this.”
Mental toughness helps you perform more consistently by improving focus, confidence and emotional control when under pressure.
Mental toughness fuels your ability to overcome obstacles such as mistakes, bad games, injuries and other setbacks.
Mental toughness gives you the motivation to learn the physical and mental skills necessary to compete your best against the toughest competition and to, ultimately, achieve your goals.
Oklahoma University senior captain Colin Van Wicklen talked about the necessity for the Sooner gymnasts to develop mental toughness in order to win a third straight National Championship.
WICKLEN: “A lot of it comes from mental toughness and the culture we’ve created. You have to have the ability to step up when the game is on the line and the lights are brightest and we have a lot of guys who really thrive under pressure.”
I think you agree that mental toughness is critical for all athletes…
The next question is:
How can you develop or improve your mental toughness?
You have to understand the ingredients to improve mental toughness.
The Sooners gymnastics team had an interesting technique for increasing their toughness…
WICKLEN: “We’ve done horse routines where we have people screaming at you and then next guy goes and it’s completely silent. We’ll switch directions on high bar, we’ll do vaults with the music off. We’re always doing things to make us uncomfortable in the gym so that when you are uncomfortable in the meet you will be ready.”
Other strategies to develop mental toughness:
- Focus on achieving your goals and, when things do go your way, learn and move forward.
- Stay optimistic especially during rough patches.
- Overcome fear of failure by getting in the habit of taking risks.
- Identify situations where you normally backed down or were not mentally tough and find different ways to respond.
- During difficult skills, training sets or practices have a “go-for-it” mentality.
- In competition, use mentally tough self-talk such as, “I will be at my best,” “Nothing can stop me,” and, “I will push through.”
Mental toughness does not happen by chance.
You have to commit to mental toughness.
It cannot be a once-in-a-while thing. You should commit to improving your mental game every day!
Try this mental toughness tip to keep you on track:
Set one mental toughness goal for each practice. For example, maybe you work on staying focused and using refocusing skills when you get off task.
Before you start practice, visualize yourself becoming distracted with school work or family life.
How would a mentally tough person refocus? What’s the process for letting go of distractions from life and refocusing?
Remember, mental toughness is not about acting tough on the outside. Mental toughness is about what you are thinking on the inside!
Read more about how to improve your confidence at Peaksports.com.
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