Mental toughness has been a popular area of study in sports literature and has been shown to be an important contributor to success at the international, national, and junior level (Crust, 2007). However, it’s not just top-performing athletes who benefit from mental toughness, with research demonstrating that it is important for individuals’ self-esteem, motivation to participate in social, professional, and sporting environments, success in their academic and professional lives, and ability to overcome challenges and failures in all aspects of their lives (Jones, Hanton, & Connaughton, 2007; Nicholls et al., 2008; Kaiseler, Polman, & Nicholls, 2009).

Key Message: Mental toughness is correlated with better athletic performance, academic performance, career success, and well being.

What is Mental Toughness?

Jones and Moorehouse (2007) provided a practical framework that categorises mental toughness into four key pillars. To develop holistic mental toughness, an athlete should work to develop their skills across all four pillars.

Attentional Focus: The ability of the athlete to maintain their focus and prevent themselves from being distracted. Athletes who excel in this skill are able to focus on the process, focus only on controlling what can be controlled, and avoid being distracted by irrelevant external stimuli and internal negative thoughts.

Coping Under Pressure: The ability of the athlete to regulate the nature and amount of stress experienced in high-pressure situations. Athletes who excel in this area accept that anxiety is inevitable and learn to enjoy the moment, they understand that some anxiety is beneficial for performance, and learn to harness their anxiety for success. This pillar also refers to pressures that athletes experience outside of competition, such as coping and recovering after a bad performance and balancing the pressures of social, academic/professional, and sporting lives.

Motivation: The ability of the athlete to harness optimal motivational strategies to maintain their desire for success and persist in attainment of their objectives. This is one of the most difficult pillars to assess, as what is the optimal level of motivation and what forms of motivation are most conducive to performance will vary dramatically between athletes. Athletes who excel in this skill will demonstrate a strong desire for success, a willingness to push themselves and persist at achieving their goal, the ability to set SMARTS goals, and the ability to retain motivation when they are unsuccessful (or successful!) in achieving their goals.

Self-Confidence: The strong belief in the athlete’s own abilities is considered to be the most important pillar of mental toughness. It is believed that high self-confidence supports the athlete to take calculated risks, control unwanted and unhelpful negative thoughts, respond well to criticism, and to maintain an optimistic outlook. Optimal levels of self-confidence are also correlated with general physical and mental well-being, allowing the athlete to participate, train hard, and fully focus on their sporting objectives.

Key Message: Mental toughness is a combination of an individual’s attentional focus, ability to cope under pressure, motivation, and self-confidence.

How Mental Toughness Contributes to Success

Jones, Hanton, & Connaughton (2007) created the following framework, demonstrating how mental toughness contributes to success in sport. If there are areas where the coach recognises that their athlete requires improvement, mental toughness training with a qualified sport psychologist may beneficial to help them achieve the desired outcomes at each phase of competition.

Key Message: Mental toughness contributes to increased athletic performance in a number of different ways during the training, competition, and post-competition phases. Mental toughness is NOT just about performing on the day.

Tools to Develop Mental Toughness

Using the four pillars of mental toughness, coaches can use simple tools to develop and support mental toughness for their athletes.

Tools for Developing Attentional Control

Regulating Self-talk: Teaching athletes to use prescribed ‘self-talk’ statements throughout training and competition has been shown to be an effective tool to increase attentional control.

There are two types of self-talk statements that athletes can use:

• i) motivational statements (e.g. I can perform well tonight or I have prepared for this event)

• ii) instructional statements (e.g. I will attack the hurdle with my knee).

These self-talk statements assist the athlete to achieve optimal attentional control and may also assist in motivation and skill acquisition.

The Training Environment: The coach can develop attentional control in training by ‘freezing’ an activity and asking the athletes what they were focusing on at the time. For example, a coach could do this when a sprinter is in the blocks, a jumper between jumps, or with a thrower just after release. The aim of this activity is to get athletes thinking and recognising when they are losing focus and to consciously moderate their attention on the task.

Setting Established Routines: Performing a standard routine and using it regularly in training and competition preparation may assist the athlete develop attentional control and train themselves to ignore distractions and focus on what requires attention. The coach can do this by setting a standard warm up routine that is used in training and competition, which is a cue for the athlete to begin to focus on the task at hand (e.g. “when I start my dynamic leg swings, my focus will be entirely on the track”).

Negative Thought Stopping: Teaching athletes to identify when they are using negative self-talk and instructing them to shift their focus onto a different stimulus can help them develop attentional control (e.g. if the athlete starts telling themselves “When my first jump is bad, I’m going to have a bad night”, they should consciously shift their attention onto their routine and say to themselves “I trust my ability / I trust my routine and will perform as I know I can on the next jump”).

Tools for Improving Coping Under Pressure

Experience: Research from Jones (2008) identified that athletes felt their ability to cope with pressure and anxiety increased with a greater number of competitive experiences and competition-modelling in training. As coaches, we can assist with this by including regular competition-days in our athletes’ season plans.

Situational Training: Coaches can simulate pressure situations in training to help athletes feel prepared in competition and ready to deal with high-pressure moments. For example, a long jump coach could create a scenario at the end of a training session (to invoke physical fatigue), where the athlete is on their third jump at a major competition after fouling on their first two jumps. Set a relevant qualification distance and challenge the athlete to consider how they will approach the situation. This kind of situational training does not need much interference from the coach once the scenario has been explained to the athlete - you are teaching the athlete to develop their own strategies and manage the situation on their own, which will help them in real pressure situations that they may face.

Cognitive Restructuring: This process is the mental skill of turning a negative thought or expectation into a positive thought or expectation through rationalisation. This can be done by:

i) Identifying the negative thoughts/expectations that are associated with pressure (e.g. “I’ve fouled twice, I’m probably going to foul again”).

ii) Develop a cue or self-talk statement to stop the negative thought (e.g. “I have prepared for this situation in training and I am in control”).

iii) Turn the negative thought/expectation into a positive thought./expectation (e.g. “I have made the appropriate adjustments and I can trust my ability to get the run-up right on this jump”).

Tools for Improving Motivation

Goal Setting: Working with the athlete to create SMARTS goals can be an effective tool for supporting the motivation of your athletes. The goals should be regularly reviewed and updated to keep your athletes motivated.
S - Specific objectives
M - Measurable (quantifiable objectives)
A - Action-Orientated (performance and process driven)
R - Realistic (challenging but attainable)
T - Timely (achievable in a reasonable time-frame)
S - Self-determined (set by the athlete - possibly with coach guidance)

Tools for Improving Self-Confidence

Imagery: Coaches can support their athletes’ self-confidence by asking athletes to relive successful past performances and challenging them to think about things that they do well. e.g. every six months, ask your athlete to write down what they currently do well and what attributes they value in themselves.

Modelling: Athletes can also develop self-confidence by learning from the behaviour and confidence of successful athletes. Ideally, having role models in your squad that other athletes can learn from is the best way for this to happen organically. Where this isn’t possible, sharing videos of successful athletes and asking your athletes to observe their behaviour may also be an effective strategy.

Monitor Your Athletes

The Psychological Performance Inventory is used by support staff to examine an athlete’s i) self confidence, ii) negative energy control, iii) attention control, iv) visualisation and imagery control, v) motivation, vi) positive energy and vii) attitude control.

This information may help the coach in understanding their athletes, their mental state during competition, areas for development (with a qualified sport psychologist), and provide a method of monitoring the progression of their mental attributes over time.

Please note that there is some debate about the validity (whether or not the test measures what it is trying to measure) and reliability (consistency of the results) of this test. However, it is a tool that can start the conversation about mental toughness and start to give you an idea about the current state of your athletes.

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Have you tried using the Psychological Performance Inventory with your athletes? Let us know how it went in the comments and whether you thought the process was worthwhile.