Mental toughness is one of the things that every coach wants their players to have. Coaches seem very confused on what actually builds mental toughness. This article will discuss what builds mental resiliency and how to develop it for youth athletes.
Mental Toughness
What is mental toughness? Most coaches/parents will say trendy words such as “grit” or “tenacity” or a “never quit” attitude. But when asked about how to build that in players and athletes they will state things like workouts need to be challenging or long or even painful. That these extreme activities will somehow develop characteristics in the players.
However, doing endurance activities doesn’t build mental toughness in fact it can have the opposite effect.
Toughness is built by building an athlete’s confidence, building their self esteem and helping athletes have success.
Military and mental toughness
When talking to coaches/parents about mental toughness almost always they will talk about how mentally strong special operations personnel are. How they can always “keep going” and have “grit”. But how did these people develop those characteristics?
At OC we have been lucky enough to train and prepare military personnel for special operation selection courses. These people entrusted us to prepare them for Q Course(Special Forces selection – also known as Green Berets), Superman School( Air Force Pararescueman – also know as PJ’s) Recon/Raider school(US Marines – Special Operations selection), Ranger School (US Army Special Operations light infantry school) amongst several others. These people all trained at OC to prepare for these selection courses and then were selected or graduated from said schools.
Common Thread
The common recurring thread amongst these people is that they were all consistent in their training, followed the plan put in place for them, and understood that it would take consistent effort over a long period of time to get ready for these schools and selection courses.
That was the only real consistent thread amongst these people besides the fact that they all wanted to serve our country.
Mental toughness for these people was built the same way it should be built in athletes. By building their self confidence through training success. Gradually challenging them, but being consistent and periodizing the challenges. None of these military personnel were subjected to pointless miles running, or any other meaningless workouts in the name of building mental toughness.
What doesn’t build mental toughness
Mental toughness isn’t built by long endurance workouts. Mental toughness isn’t built by doing TIKTok challenges or by running miles after miles. In fact, all of these types of “training” activities are great ways to injure athletes, and in fact damage their self esteem and self worth.
Athletes are not “empowered” by workouts that leave them feeling broken down and hurt. Athletes don’t build self esteem by running endless sprints or by bear crawling around a track. These are all activities that untrained coaches/parents think help athletes but in fact have no positive effect for the athletes that are subjected to these “workouts”.
How to build mental toughness in athletes
Youth athletes need to see success. They need challenges and to be challenged but this isn’t achieved by “beat down” workouts. Athletes need to understand the rules or guidelines and be held accountable to these standards. Hopefully, the same standards that the parents/coaches have for themselves.
At OC Sports Performance we use metrics to track progress in athletes. They start showing improvements in Key Performance Indicators(KPI). Their self esteem increases, they are empowered by knowing they are improving, and they can see and feel these changes in their performance. This builds success.
Every workout is preplanned. Programmed at least a month in advance. The workout helps the athletes/teams schedule and does in fact help the athlete reach their goals.
Athletes want to know how training sessions are helping the athletes. Coaches/parents should be able to tell an athlete what the desired effect of the training session is. If a parent/coach simply says it is to build mental toughness, or “grit” or any other trendy word, maybe they should rethink what that training session is.
Long Term success
Athletes want long term success. Parents want their athletes to reach their full athletic potential and have fun! Both the athlete and parent would be better served by not chasing TikTok challenges and instead focus on long term development. Make a plan, stick to the plan, and see success both in performance as well as self confidence!
OC Sports Performance has helped thousands of Bend, Oregon athletes reach their full potential. Experience the difference book a FREE INTRO session today!
