Get Tough!



Without mental toughness, failure eats at the soul, erodes confidence, and can snowball into disaster. --Karl Kuehl


So, after a long delay (sorry! it's a few weeks from the end of the semester and I've had way too many papers to grade), here is the definition of "mental toughness" given by elite athletes:


Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to:



  • Generally, cope better than your opponents with the many demand(competition, training, lifestyle) that sport places on a performer.

  • Specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure.


To refresh your memory (my bad for taking so long), Graham Jones, Sheldon Hanton and Declan Connaughton, three researchers from Wales, decided to do something about the general lack of clarity and consensus as to the definition of "mental toughness." In other words, they got sick of everything under the sun associated with athletic success being labelled as mental toughness. So they interviewed elite athletes (both men and women) in a wide range of sports (both team and individual) and asked them for a definition of mental toughness and also the necessary attibutes that the ideal mentally tough athlete possessed. They came up with twelve. But before I list the twelve attributes, I thought I'd share some of your comments about mental toughness:





Phoenix wrote that: "Mental toughness is riding into the wind and not giving up, running in sub zero weather and staying positive, racing when the odds are stacked against you, smiling when you cross the finish line -even if you're last, knowing when to stop and accept a DNF and live to race another day, believing in yourself even when no one else does."


Daniel, who is taking part in a 3-year study of the positive role of synchronicity, dream work, and depth psychology in the pursuit of competitive and athletic excellence, expressed concerns that so many definitions of mental toughness focus on domination, on winning and not losing, on beating an opponent -- even when the opponent is our own mind. He wrote that: "It would seem that with too-fixed ideas about good and bad (thoughts, emotions, sensations, and even winning and losing--in the small sense) we miss out on the opportunities for the richest and deepest transformations. These transformations would leave us as not only better performing athletes but more integrated human beings."


It's worth noting that Comm, also included a spiritual aspect to his definition of mental toughness.


The answer that brought a smile to my face (quite a task, I might add, as I was in the midst of reading lots and lots of student papers) was from SixTwoThree who wrote that mental toughness is: "finishing something you had no business starting."


(Shameless plug time: If you are a triathlete or endurance athlete and are interested in what keeps us going, what get's us to the finishline, why we do what we do, you can check out the article, "Why We Don't Quit" which you'll find in the resources section of my practice website.)


I really appreciate your responses as they make this blog much more interesting.


What did the athletes who were interviewed say? Here are their 12 attributes of mental toughness (in rank order):



  1. Having an unshakable self-belief in your ability to achieve your competition goals.

  2. Having an unshakable self-belief that you possess unique qualitites and abilities that make you better than your opponents.

  3. Having an insatiable desire and internalized motives to succeed.

  4. Bouncing back from performance set-backs as a result of increased determination to succeed.

  5. Thriving on the pressure of competition.

  6. Accepting that competition anxiety is inevitable and knowing that you can cope with it.

  7. Not being adversely affected by others' good and bad performances.

  8. Remaining fully-focused in the face of personal life distractions.

  9. Switching a sport focus on and off as required.

  10. Remaining fully-focused on the task at hand in the face of competition-specific distractions.

  11. Pushing back the boundaries of physical and emotional pain, while still maintaining technique and effort under distress (in training and competition).

  12. Regaining psychological control following unexpected, uncontrollable events.

What I find interesting is how "human" these are. For example, item 6 acknowledges that we all get nervous before a competition and that mental toughness is not the absence of competition anxiety. Item 4 acknowledges that we are bound to have set-backs and that to be mentally tough all we need to do is "bounce back." Still, when I look at the list it does seem like quite a tall order.


However, that's where the techniques of sport psychology come in. Mental toughness can be developed -- it is not necessarily something that one is or is not born with. By using visualization, positive self-talk, relaxation and some other tricks-of-the-trade, athletes can become mentally tough -- however they define it.


References: Jones, G., Hanton, S., & Connaughton, D. (2002). What is this thing called mental toughness? An investigation of elite sport performers. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 14, 205-218.







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