Concepts for Coaches: Mental Toughness

Ah, mental toughness. A nebulous term with somewhere north of 70 different scientific definitions. You know it when you see it, but you're not quite sure what it is.

That's because it isn't an entity or an essence.

It's a collection of behaviors we've come to call "mental toughness," and we've conflated those behaviors with some innate psychological characteristic.

By understanding what these behaviors are, and how to coach them, you can create mentally tough athletes - without doing any of the ludicrous things with adverse outcomes we read about in the media. Let's start there.

Mental toughness is not built through outlandish physical challenges.

Let me repeat that.

You will not make your athletes mentally tougher by having them do log PT, run around the track in garbage bags, perform military stunts, or take off and put on clothes in a pool.

That's because these activities have absolutely 0 connection to the experience of sport, and there's not really any learning baked in. To be clear, doing hard things can improve what we call mental toughness, but that happens outside of the training with learning, illustrating lessons through reflection, and identifying clear takeaways that can be applied in the future.

If you want to build mental toughness, you can challenge your athletes - but make sure the point you're making is clear, connected to sport, and most importantly, safe. You don't need to build mental toughness with some crazy activity.

Mental toughness is a collection of persistence, goal-directed behavior, and effectively using stress.

Let's break these down.

Persistence is simply continuing to give an effort even in the face of a challenge or adversity. We call someone mentally tough when they don't give up and don't back down.

Here, all we're looking to coach is increasing effort when the challenge level rises.

Goal-directed behavior means that persistence is in service of a valued end. Persisting for the sake of persisting is foolish - sometimes it's better to quit, particularly when you don't care much about the outcome and further persistence just increases risk. But, in the context of something you care deeply about, there's no substitute for persistence when things get difficult, and increasing effort is often an effective way of responding.

You're coaching goal clarity and making sure what your athlete is working toward is meaningful to them.

Finally, an athlete can't really exhibit mental toughness without some form of stress. Seeing stress as enhancing - something that psychologists call an appraisal - allows you to use that physiology effectively to facilitate performance.

Here, you're coaching a mindset - that stress isn't harmful, it can be helpful.

Mental toughness isn't black and white.

Because mental toughness is just a collection of behaviors, it means that if we aren't seeing an athlete behave in a mentally tough way, the problem doesn't lie with the athlete.

It lies with the coach.

These are behaviors that you can coach, and these are skills that athletes can learn. Rather than focusing on whether or not your athlete has this non-descript characteristic, put your time and attention into identifying which of the three dimensions might be most limited and how you can address that. You can also focus on what they do well, and how you can leverage that strength to further optimize their performance.

The next time you're looking to cultivate mental toughness, start by looking at how you coach these three behaviors. Over time, without a ropes course or a fear-factor-type challenge, you might just find your athletes behaving the way you want.