What is mental toughness?
Can it be built?
Can it be trained?
If so, what are the best ways to do it?
Between my observations that:
There are undoubtedly people with higher levels of mental toughness than others.
How often I hear about coaches attempting to build mental toughness via difficult conditioning exercise.
It’s a is a topic I find myself pondering often.
So what is the point of this blog?
I think my point is to have a clearer picture of what mental toughness is and what it isn’t. I think it’s important for us to fight misinformation when we are qualified to do so. And this topic has A LOT of misinformation around it.
The first thing that needs to be addressed is how hard it is to actually prove or disprove anything is able to increase or decrease a person’s level of mental toughness.
The entire concept is built around relative terms. There is nothing to measure. No real way to prove or disprove.
In my years as a performance coach, it is definitely noticeable that, generally speaking, the more a concept is built around relative terms, the more confusion there will be surrounding it.
This leads to a lot of “Because we’ve always done it that way.”situations. Which can lead to some less than optimal performance-building methods being used under the guise of making the athlete better.
So what is mental toughness?
A quick google search results in the following.
“Mental toughness is a personality trait that measures a person's ability to perform well under pressure, and to persevere in the face of challenges. It can be defined as a combination of resilience, confidence, and the ability to control emotions.”
Sounds about right to me.
To me, a mentally tough person is stonefaced when the world is collapsing down around them. When the proverbial bullets are flying.
The very first example I think of is a baseball pitcher on the mound when they cannot find the strike zone.
A hitter that just struck out with the bases loaded and his team down 3.
A fielder that just bombed a routine throw into the bleachers scoring the go-ahead run.
How do these players respond?
Do they spin out of control so that there is no hope for them to accomplish anything positive? Often times, yes.
I happen to be friends with Coach Bill Mosiello, hitting coach and RC for TCU. He was the manager for the Arkansas Travelers when Mike Trout was there(They used to be the Angels AA affiliate).
He once told me of all the amazing things that Mike could do, and there are a lot, the most impressive was when he would strike out looking in the bottom of the seventh with bases loaded, his team down three.
He had the ability to calmly walk back to the dugout, take his batting gloves off, put his helmet and bat up, grab his glove, go to the field and make a spectacular play because he wasn’t mentally rattled.
THAT is mental toughness. “Get them next time” mentality.
Mentally, baseball is an incredibly taxing sport. In other sports, when you make a mistake, you get to leave the field or there is fast action the other way. There is much less time to dwell.
Baseball, a sport that is predominantly won by the team that fails the least, stops when you make a mistake. Everybody stares at you. The magnifying glass just gets bigger, closer, hotter, and more intense.
When we find ourselves in these situations, we are insanely uncomfortable. Our brain is begging for anything to make the misery stop. It’s so powerful that throwing up your hands and walking off the field in defeat will sometimes, briefly feel like a viable option.
Your breathing is out of control. And all you can do is envision more failure.
“And all you can do is envision more failure.”
Don’t forget that sentence. It’s VERY important.
Very few of us do not meltdown in those situations.
The funny thing is, I have met athletes that I would not consider very mentally tough who do not break down in those situations. They can practically look at you and smile.
Why?
Honestly, in those situations, I feel like the athlete has a very good mental grasp on the real world versus sports. They realize it is not the end of the world if they perform poorly.
On the other hand,I have known multiple guys,not at all an isolated incident, that can tough-out levels of conditioning that make me nauseous to think about, but will break down mentally in the face of on-field failure.
Why?
I don’t know, but from my viewpoint, it’s pretty damning to the idea that conditioning builds the type of mental toughness we want our athletes to have.
Especially with the increased level of injury potential that comes with excessive conditioning.
Bottom line, (remember that sentence from earlier) mentally tough people are able to:
Make the bad thoughts stop
Ignore the bad thoughts
Or actually never begin having the bad thoughts in the first place.
Mentally WEAK people LISTEN to the bad thoughts. Some even invite them. When this happens they will inevitably be consumed by them and failure becomes the only option.
Before we go any further, lets do this since I’ve already touched on it.
Can Mental Toughness be built with conditioning?
Personally, the only time I think it can build mental toughness is if the person has never done much hard conditioning. Then it may build a baseline or foundation of mental toughness. Because the person is learning that basic discipline will result in good things. But I also believe the law of diminishing returns will kick in quickly in this situation.
I’ve often joked that excessive conditioning doesn’t build mental toughness, but having to deal with the coach that is forcing the excessive conditioning might build some however.
But I digress…..😁
What makes me think that mental toughness cannot be built by excessive conditioning?
Well, mainly the example given above. I’ve seen that A LOT.
But also, I think it’s because when I envision a mentally tough person, they are exhibiting personality traits that I don’t see being trained at all when someone is being forced to do excessive conditioning exercise.
Mental Toughness is discipline of the mind.
Doing something that sucks because a coach will punish you further if you don’t do it is NOT discipline.
Having said that, a person putting THEMSELVES through difficult conditioning is a COMPLETELY different situation. That will definitely build mental toughness in my opinion. But t there are safer ways.
If we’re being honest, I think my real point is this:
Maybe conditioning does build some mental toughness, but there are methods out there that are better, more effective, and less likely-to-cause an injury.
So what are some ways I believe can increase mental toughness?
Well, as I stated earlier, I do not believe that there is a way to prove or disprove that any method works, but I do have a few hypotheses.
1. Ice Baths
This is the only one that I am confident will build more mental toughness, but it has to be done a certain way.
I think this is a very important point to take away from this, regardless of how someone goes about trying to build more mental toughness the HOW is way more important than the WHAT.
The toughness is not built in putting the body in ice water. The mental toughness is created by IGNORING the outside stimulus that is creating extreme discomfort.
This begs the question,
Couldn’t this be done when the team is conditioning?
Technically, I suppose.
But heres the problem.
Excessive conditioning is causing a ton of damage to the athlete in increased injury potential and costing us
Valuable practice time.
Valuable practice productivity because everything is sloppy when they’re exhausted.
The weight we fought so hard to put on.
The strength we fought so hard to build because that’s what long conditioning bouts are fueled by.
not to mention, they are complaining about the situation the whole time you’re making them do it.
Mental toughness is being able to ignore the sucky situation. That is forcing them to get better at acknowledging and complaining about the sucky situation. Practicing how to complain about a bad situation is what causes mental weakness.
A person that acknowledges the uncomfortableness is a person that will acknowledge their failure on the field.
They need to learn how to not let those thoughts in, because once you let those thoughts in, you will eventually, inevitably meltdown.
The athlete that can remain stone faced when things get very uncomfortable, will not meltdown.
I feel very comfortable saying this hypothesis is true.
Try this quick little exercises. It should help you see my point clearer.
Envision yourself or your kid or favorite athlete completely stone faced while sinking into an ice bath.
Now imagine that person having just walked the bases loaded with their team clinging to a 2 run lead.
Imagine their face and body language while having a meltdown.
Now, instead, imagine them with the facial expression they had while ignoring the uncomfortableness of the ice bath.
Which version of that athlete has the best chance of getting them out of the inning?
Exactly.
2. General self discipline
To be honest, this topic comes to my mind every year at Halloween. As I write this, it is about 5 PM on October 31, 2024.
There is a massive bowl of candy in our kitchen. It has become a “thing” for me each year to not eat one single piece of candy. This takes a lot of mental toughness for me. I am a sugar addict. I have been since I was a child.
To be clear, I am not being funny or light hearted when I say I am a sugar-addict. It’s not a cute little vice for me. Sugar changes me. It changes my behavior and thoughts.
So it takes work for me to not eat halloween candy.
I don’t think this exact method would work for someone who does not have a pretty severe addiction to sugar, but it would work for anything that person has been known to overindulge in.
I believe very strongly this reinforces mental toughness for me. It reminds me how much better I feel when I push through. It helps me to remember the pain of discipline doesn’t hurt as much as my mind is telling me it will.
This WILL NOT work if you force someone to do it.
Long story short, I don’t think you can create any situation for another person that will help build usable, mental toughness. I just don’t believe it works that way. And the ones that seek me out to tell me how wrong I am about this are the ones that prefer status quo. They’re good as long as they can pretend they’re doing the right thing.
What are a few other ways that I believe will help to build mental toughness, especially in teenage athletes?
Practically any initiative they take on their own to better their situation should contribute to their level of mental toughness.
Examples include:
Routine building.
Whether it be studying, training at EAP daily, learning to eat better, daily prayer and meditation, deciding on their own to keep a more tidy room.
Practically anything that we know is a good idea but also doesn’t immediately provide positive feedback.
Do you know why people eat too much junk, struggle with porn addiction, and endlessly scroll TikTok?
Because it makes them feel good immediately. That doesn’t take mental toughness.
Mental toughness is saying no to these things.
Mental toughness is:
Setting a goal
Creating daily habits that will aid you in sticking with that plan.
And most importantly, ignoring the devil on your shoulder when he tells you to blow those things off.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Michael Richards
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