Mental toughness in sport is………………….
What is you personal definition of mental toughness in your sport?
Can you think of a situation during your sporting career where you displayed mental toughness? How did that feel for you and what were some of the key elements of being able to do it?
Many people will write down as an answer something along the long lines of the ability to focus under pressure during a particular game.
To persevere no matter what or to believe in myself to get the job done when the odds seemed against you.
Your answer to the above question is very important because it becomes the goal that you are trying to achieve for yourself.
This will become your biggest mental toughness training goal.
Realizing this will put you on the road to developing superior mental toughness in your chosen sport. It will also become the basis of your mental toughness training program.
As an example to what I am talking about here if you wrote that you need to believe in yourself to get the job done. This would suggest that you have faced situations in your sport when you have not felt up to the challenge . This has led you to revert to helplessness. A feeling of being lost and not knowing what to do next.
Like being frozen in the headlights and not daring to move.
If you are a cricketer for instance who normally has a batting average of 50 and bats for a considerable amount of time, yet against some teams your results are far less.
This suggests that you seem to lack confidence against these teams and they have a way of making you feel inadequate.
The question is why?
What is that these specific teams are doing to get you out?
What are their tactics and how do they execute them?
How are they making you lose concentration and get out?
If you develop the right focus to this situation then you can begin to build up your mental toughness towards it and begin to counter their tactics.
This will allow you to get back to your best and restore your confidence in your own ability.
The right focus shifts you away from feeling helpless it provides with tools to identify how you can succeed again.
Now you can see the importance of what you wrote down as your personal definition to mental toughness.
Revisit these answers and begin to analyse your needs for mental toughness.
Ask yourself what you want out of the coming season?
On my next post I will be tackling the concept of trying to control the outcome of a particular situation.
Is this something that contributes to building up your mental toughness in your chosen sport? Can you think of a time when you have tried to do this?
What happened?
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