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How to Build Mental Resilience in Sports

July 3, 2023/in App Content, For Coaches, Mental Fitness, Science, Training Tips /by Matthew Mace

When the going gets tough, the best athletes use their resilience to persevere. In the fast-paced and highly competitive world of sports, athletes are constantly faced head-on with numerous setbacks and flickers of self-doubt.

There’s dealing with injury — and whether you can come back from it — coming back from a loss, switching teams, and more day-to-day challenges, such as training, competing, and staying motivated after a loss, or several defeats.

Resilience is defined as the ability to adapt, recover, and grow stronger from adversity. It’s how the best athletes stay focused on their goals, despite how it may look to others. Many people think that some athletes are born with resilience, and that others are not. And while that may somewhat be true — in that, some people are naturally more resilient than others — resilience can definitely be trained.

So, this blog post will explain why mental resilience is important and ways for you to develop resilience in sports.

What is the importance of resilience in sports?

Resilience is a defining factor that separates good athletes from exceptional ones. In sports, where success is often determined by split-second decisions and the ability to perform under immense pressure, mental resilience plays a vital role. It’s fuel to the fire that allows athletes to navigate setbacks, injuries, failures, and self-doubt without losing sight of their goals.

Add resilience to your toolkit, and you’ll bounce back stronger from defeats. It allows you to cultivate a positive and growth mindset, and helps athletes embrace challenges to grow, rather than decline and move backward. Something you should definitely avoid in the realm of sports!

How to develop resilience

For most, resilience is not an innate trait; it’s a skill that can be developed over your sports career. But the skill of resilience must be nurtured and watered over time — it’s not a one-and-done kind of trait. It requires a lot of work and discipline to maintain.

Continue reading to discover ways to build mental resilience in sports, based on research with Elite athletes.

Understand your motivation

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Why do you do what you do?

To build and develop mental resilience, you need to understand your motivation. What are you trying to achieve? It could be something as simple as becoming a better athlete, winning a local meet, or landing a spot on a big team.

Whatever it is, channel it. And remind yourself of your motivators — what values would someone who is striving to achieve your goals have? Practice those!

Evaluate setbacks and implement lessons

We all encounter setbacks — things don’t always go exactly as planned; you get injured and can’t play for 12 weeks, you don’t qualify for the next stage of a race, or you don’t perform as well as you thought you would.

And while it’s easier to wallow in self-pity, the only real way to get better — and to build mental resilience in the process — is to evaluate setbacks and implement lessons from these.

Use failure as a stepping stone toward success. If you missed a free throw in the final minute of a game, maybe you need to work on your shots under pressure. If you lost a race in the final 100m, you might need to work on your sprint performance.

Add fuel to the fire, evaluate your setbacks, and learn from your mistakes. Every time you come back from defeat, you beat on the hammer in the fire and become more and more resilient.

Use mental skills to prepare for success

Mental skills such as visualization, self-talk, goal setting, and mindfulness are all powerful techniques that can help prepare you for success. They can also help you build resilience, allowing you to maintain a positive mindset as you navigate through setbacks and adversity.

For example, self-talk can help you increase confidence and focus before a big game, goal setting helps you stay focused on what matters most, and mindfulness allows you to clear distractions to prepare for success.

Focus on achieving balance

Achieving life balance can help you build resilience and improve your performance. Often, athletes think that the more they do, the better they’ll get. And while that’s true to some extent, this can also lead to physical and mental burnout and sports injury.

Life balance, i.e. switching focus between sports, social life, relationships, and work, ensures you tick all the other boxes to help you improve. For example, if your social life is lacking, then you might be less resilient as one of your basic needs is not met.

So instead of going all in on your sport, not seeing friends or family, and isolating yourself from the outside world, it’s a lot healthier and easier to build resilience if you focus on balance. Achieving balance is also a lot easier than giving it 100% all of the time!

**Learn more about Rewire’s Neuro-Performance System**

Use Rewire to build resilience and increase performance

Athletes can use Rewire to build mental resilience and increase their performance. Discover our integrated mental resilience training system, based on neuro-training protocols, that can be used with a variety of different sports and activities.

Monitor and track your readiness to measure physical, cognitive, and emotional stressors and achieve life balance to propel you forward. We can help you become more resilient, helping you achieve your goals.

“Rewire’s latest platform makes mental strength training more accessible to athletes everywhere with easy-to-use tools to help them reach their goals.” – NBA All-Star, Kyle Korver

Find out how Rewire can help you

References:

Kegelaers, J. and Wylleman, P., 2019. Exploring the coach’s role in fostering resilience in elite athletes. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 8(3), p.239.

How to Build Mental Toughness in Athletes

May 29, 2023/in For Coaches, Mental Fitness, Science, Training Tips /by Matthew Mace

When it comes to sports, mental toughness can be just as important as physical ability.

Athletes with a strong mindset are better equipped to handle pressure, overcome obstacles, and push through fatigue to achieve their goals. But mental toughness isn’t something that comes naturally to everyone. It’s a skill that must be developed and honed over time.

In this blog post, we’ll explore key principles and provide tips for building mental toughness in athletes, this includes goal setting, visualization, and adopting a stoic mindset. So whether you’re an elite athlete looking to gain a slight advantage, or a beginner who is just learning about mental toughness, you will find this post valuable.

So, let’s dive in and discover how to build mental toughness in athletes!

What is mental toughness?

Mental toughness refers to the ability to perform under pressure, cope with challenges, and maintain focus and motivation in the face of adversity, i.e. during intense competition.

But what makes up mental toughness? It includes a mix of psychological skills, such as an unshakable self-belief, a resilient mindset, perseverance, and the ability to control emotions in real-time (e.g. not being affected by a yellow card or a decision that did not go in your favor).

It’s widely understood that the best athletes are mentally tough. They know how to persevere and dig deep when the going gets tough. But it’s not only a skill for sports; it’s a skill for life.

So how do you build mental toughness?

How to build mental toughness

Some athletes are more mentally tough than others. That’s just the way that is. However, you can train and build mental toughness. Iron doesn’t become a sword until it’s beaten in the fire — don’t expect to become mentally tough without any work.

So how do you start beating on the iron and strengthening your mind? We recommend the following:

Set goals to improve mental toughness
Use positive visualization
Be stoic
Practice discipline
Use positive self-talk
Embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and improve

Set goals to improve mental toughness

Goal setting is an essential skill and tool athletes should develop to help build mental toughness.

By now, you’re most likely familiar with SMART goals — these are specific, measurable, and achievable goals that provide you with a clear sense of direction, purpose, and intention [3].

As a general rule of thumb, you should set both long-term and short-term goals. But a big mistake many people make is not aligning their short and long-term objectives. Some people prefer to label their short-term goals as an “action plan” — it’s how you move towards those long-term goals [1].

Let’s say, for instance, that your long-term goal is to break the 15-minute 5k time. In that case, your short-term goals, or your action plan, should be to break the 15.30, then the 15.15 times, and so on.

Achieving these short-term goals in pursuit of your long-term goals provide motivation, confidence, and help you stay on track to achieve your goals.

Goal setting is a critical component to build mental toughness in sports, whether you’re an x-country runner, a basketball player, or a pitcher in baseball. Well-thought-out goals provide you with the blueprint for overcoming adversity and move the needle toward success.

Use positive visualization

Positive visualization is a powerful, and often underused tool in the mental toughness toolkit.

Athletes can visualize and rehearse successful skill performance (and even scenarios) to improve their confidence and reduce anxiety. In fact, visualization is thought to reinforce positive neural pathways in the brain — it’s very difficult for the brain to tell what’s real and what’s not.

It’s why Tiger Woods is a big proponent of mental training and visualization. Here’s a quote from Tiger:

“In the year 2000 I won 12 times, including 3 majors and I only remember hitting one shot I would call perfect. It was a 3 wood on #14 in the third round of the British Open at St. Andrews. As with every shot, I attempt, I visualize that ball flight and the shot turned out exactly as I had planned.”

You’re essentially creating a blueprint of success — a roadmap you can follow and apply directly to your sport or skill.

Athletes can also use positive visualization to reduce anxiety — that includes pre-game and even mid-game nerves. The result? You can create a mentally tough athlete who has the tools on hand to adjust their emotional state on the fly, resulting in peak performance whether performing well in training, or in front of a crowd of thousands.

Be stoic

Marcus Aurelius once said:

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

But what does it actually mean to be stoic? Stoicism is a philosophy that emphasizes self-control, discipline, and resilience in the face of adversity, e.g. relegation, not being picked for a team, losing despite training hard, and so on.

The guiding principle of stoicism is to accept the things you can’t control. And instead, to focus on what you can control (what is in your power) to develop inner calm and tranquility.

Stoics believe that by effectively managing emotions and focusing on the present moment, that we can overcome negative emotions and harmful impulses, and face challenges head-on.

For example, let’s say it’s halftime, and you’re losing by five points. An athlete with a stoic mindset see’s the situation for what it is. But does not experience that psychological quiver. Instead, they focus on what they can control and practice discipline to do their absolute best to overcome the obstacle in front of them.

Practice Discipline

We’ve discussed this above already, but discipline is an essential aspect of building mental toughness [2].

If an athlete does not have discipline, they’ll struggle to develop mental toughness. Take a moment to think about it: discipline is needed to set healthy habits and routines (e.g. waking up early to train, following a healthy diet, and avoiding distractions). If you can’t practice discipline, then you can’t cultivate a growth mindset, i.e. you won’t embrace challenges, seek feedback, or be open to learning new skills and techniques to improve performance.

Focus on improving your discipline, and you’ll set yourself up for success.

Use positive self-talk

Athletes can use positive self-talk to shift their mindset, focus on performance, and reduce negative thoughts. Often, athletes will speak affirmations, mantras, and cues to improve performance.

Many people think that self-talk is exclusively done aloud. But a lot of athletes speak to themselves in their minds — there is no right or wrong way to do it. However, you don’t have an actual conversation with yourself to reap the benefits.

Add mantras such as “Make the play,” “I deserve to win,” and “I got this,” into your game.

You can also add cues to enforce positive behaviors, e.g. “high knees” or “eyes ahead.” You’ll need to create your own cues and mantras for your sport, but adding this self-talk can help improve your game.

Embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and improve

Instead of viewing failure as a setback or a reflection of their abilities, athletes who adopt a growth mindset see failure/a lack of success as an opportunity for improvement usually come out on top.

This, once again, relates back to stoicism and resilience in the face of adversity.

Athletes can learn from their mistakes, failures, and shortcomings and refine their techniques, improve their weaknesses, and double down on their strengths. Embracing this mindset improves mental toughness and creates a mindset shift towards welcoming difficult things.

See failure as an opportunity to improve. It’s part of beating the iron in the fire — it will only make you stronger, so long as you embrace the process.

Use Rewire to develop mental toughness

Athletes can use Rewire to improve their mindset, manage stress, and boost mental toughness. The Athlete Platform is based on neuroscience, using brain-endurance training protocols to help you build mental toughness.

And if you’re a coach, you can use Rewire to enhance your athletes’ performance. You gain access to the readiness dashboard and can tailor sessions based on how “ready” your athletes are.

“With Rewire, you have a controlled environment and structure so that you can choose when you want to add mental training to your workouts and you can do it as often as you’d like.” – Laura Kline (Elite Ultra Runner & Endurance Athlete)

Find out how Rewire can help you

References:

Bailey, R.R., 2019. Goal setting and action planning for health behavior change. American journal of lifestyle medicine, 13(6), pp.615-618.
Fourie, S. and Potgieter, J.R., 2001. The nature of mental toughness in sport. South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation, 23(2), pp.63-72.
McCarthy, P.J. and Gupta, S., 2022. Set goals to get goals: Sowing seeds for success in sports. Frontiers for Young Minds, 10(10.3389).

Mental Training for Athletes: What is It and How to Start

May 22, 2023/in Mental Fitness, Training Tips /by Matthew Mace

If you’re an athlete looking to take your performance to the next level, chances are, you’ve heard of mental training.

All the greats do it, including Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and many other successful athletes.

This often overlooked aspect of training involves training the mind to improve physical performance. How, you ask? Mental training can help athletes overcome anxiety, improve focus, and build confidence.

And better yet, it’s easy to implement into your training and can be done virtually anywhere, whether in a hotel room, on the court, or even on a plane when you’ve got a few hours to sit and stare out the window.

The remainder of this blog post will explain how you can begin to use mental training (and mental training tools). We’ll explain what it is, and how to get started.

Key takeaways:

Mental training can help improve performance & increase confidence
Anyone can start mental training — it’s not just for Elite level athletes
Find the best mental skills and apply these to the weaker areas of your game

What is mental training?

Mental skills training consists of a mix of techniques and practices to help you develop mental toughness, improve skill learning, and even performance on (and off) the field, including in everyday life [1].

Examples of popular mental training exercises include:

Visualization exercises
Mindfulness
Goal setting
Deep breathing
Positive self-talk

Other mental training tools and skills exist, but these are the main ones (and easiest to start with no prior mental training experience).

But for those interested, more advanced skills include [2]:

Emotional control
Activation & Relaxation
Negative thinking
Attentional control

If you do choose to adopt the more advanced skills, we’d recommend focusing on the easier-to-learn and implement skills first. For example, positive self-talk is typically easier to learn than negative thinking (if you do negative thinking wrong, it could affect your confidence). Likewise, taking deep breaths and focusing on mindfulness is relatively easy to begin vs. activation and relaxation of the muscles.

By practicing a mix of mental skills, athletes can reduce anxiety, improve confidence, develop resilience, and ultimately improve performance.

Why is mental training important?

Let’s think of a scenario where you have two athletes — both are equally matched in physical skills, but one athlete practices mental skills such as visualization, goal setting, and positive self belief and self talk. The other athlete focuses exclusively on physical practice and performance.

Which athlete do you think will perform best?

Chances are, it’s the athlete who has a more holistic skill set — they’re essentially getting more training in without the added fatigue. Performing visualization, for example, reinforces neural pathways in the brain. It’s like training, but without lacing up your boots and heading out to practice.

Mental training can be especially useful for overcoming anxiety and weaknesses in your sport. Let’s say, for example, that you’re a cyclist, but you find descending challenging — perhaps it scares you.

You can use mental training to increase self confidence, reduce anxiety, and run through successful skill performance (in your mind) to get better at descending confidently. That also includes mental preparation before a big game or competition — you’re better prepared, and more likely to achieve athletic success.

With the correct physical and mental training, you’ll quickly improve your skill-specific performance.

Mental skills in practice – what does it look like?

Creating a mental training plan will look different for every athlete. For example, some athletes may prefer certain mental skills, applying these to weaknesses in their performance. Other athletes may find other skills difficult to utilize but use 1 or 2 skills really well.

A great way to put mental training into practice is to list all the required skills of your sport, and rate these (based on how good you think you are at each skill) on a scale of 1-10 (1 being poor, 10 being excellent).

The skills which you rate the lowest are what you should seek to improve using mental skills. For example, if you’re a cyclist and you feel scared of cornering at high speeds, you could use a combination of positive self-talk and visualization to improve self confidence and reduce anxiety.

Choosing what mental skills is a little more complicated than that, but we have an entire article on how to create a mental training program for athletes — check it out if you want a more in-depth guide.

How can mental training improve athletic performance?

Mental training can improve performance by enhancing an athlete’s ability to regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and by strengthening their mental toughness. It’s also a useful tool to increase motivation!

To provide a contextual example: athletes can use visualization techniques to rehearse competition. They can use positive self-talk to increase confidence and reduce anxiety, e.g. using cues and prompts to keep them focused with minimal distractions.

Furthermore, goal setting can help athletes move with a sense of purpose and direction. This makes it a lot easier for athletes to develop healthy routines and habits that move the needle towards greater performance, both as an individual and a team.

These are just a few examples of how mental training can positively impact athletes. But these are only a few case uses — the best athletes apply these principles and skills as part of a daily practice to improve all aspects of their sport/game further.

Who can benefit from mental training?

Mental training is not just for elite athletes! And while Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods may use these powerful techniques, there’s no reason why you can’t implement them into your training, too.

Training the mind is for everyone, whether you’re in a weekend soccer league, or you play basketball in high school.

And while it’s mainly used by the professional athlete population, we can learn a lot from those who use it. Besides, there’s a reason why they do it: it’s because it’s so powerful.

But mental training is also useful for non-athletes. Coaches may also choose to engage in mental strategies to improve their performance, goal-setting ability, and communication during an important game (i.e. not letting emotions get the best of them).

There are endless avenues and possibilities for mental training. And with the field of sports psychology only getting bigger, it’s a better time than any to start mental training.

Use Rewire to increase readiness and focus to perform

Athletes looking to boost their mental toughness, manage stress, and improve their mindset can benefit from using Rewire’s athlete platform.

Based on neuro-science, athletes can employ brain training protocols and activities to build mental strength, resilience, and essential mental skills. You can also use guided sessions to improve focus, provide stress & anxiety relief, and prepare the mind for training or competition.

Coaches can also use Rewire to improve athlete performance — you can view the athlete readiness dashboard, which provides valuable insights and allows you to adjust training load accordingly to help achieve optimal performance (while avoiding injury and burnout).

“Rewire comes as a Gamechanger in the field of ‘tracking and monitoring readiness’ and provides a one-stop shop for both physical and cognitive recovery, as well as having functionality for building mental resilience.” – Pete McKnight (Human Performance Expert)

Find out how Rewire can help you

References:

Holmes, P.S. and Collins, D.J., 2001. The PETTLEP approach to motor imagery: A functional equivalence model for sport psychologists. Journal of applied sport psychology, 13(1), pp.60-83.
Röthlin, P., Horvath, S., Trösch, S., Holtforth, M.G. and Birrer, D., 2020. Differential and shared effects of psychological skills training and mindfulness training on performance-relevant psychological factors in sport: a randomized controlled trial. BMC psychology, 8, pp.1-13.

How to Teach Mental Toughness in Sports

March 27, 2023/in For Coaches, Science /by Matthew Mace

Mental toughness is often associated with an unshakable self-belief, the refusal to quit, and impressive self confidence.

Professional athletes, in particular, are known to face adversity head-on, staying concentrated on the task at hand, regardless of what obstacles are thrown their way [2].

Many of the very best athletes understand that the need to develop mental toughness is crucial. It’s what separates the best from the very best.

Conversely, if an athlete lacks mental toughness, then they are less likely to give it their all in both training and competition.

Which athlete would you rather have on your team?

Some athletes are more mentally tough than others; it’s just how it is. And it’s the way that it will always be.

But mental toughness can be trained. So that’s what this blog post is all about — this is a guide for coaches on how to teach mental toughness in sports.

Key takeaways:

Mental toughness and resilience can be trained
Use SMART goal setting to build discipline and accountability
Create training scenarios to mimic dips in mental toughness

Grateful and relieved to finally put this chapter behind me, it has been an emotional 9 months. Thank you to all of those who have supported and believed in me throughout. pic.twitter.com/OGzsg83Gjj
— Chris Froome (@chrisfroome) July 2, 2018

A few examples of mental toughness in sport

When you think of an athlete who is mentally tough, your mind likely goes to those who persevere and push through adversity. Usually, it’s the athletes who show up and give it their all, game after game, session after session.

It’s the talented athletes who have the mental strength to ride a solo breakaway at the Giro d’Italia with 80 km to go. It’s those who play with food poisoning and get promoted to the NBA finals. And it’s the athletes who fight with their teammate for multiple seasons but go on to win the world championship with Mercedes at the very last Formula One race of the season in Abu Dhabi.

It’s the Chris Froomes, the Michael Jordans, and the Nico Rosbergs of the world. They’re all incredible athletes who can access the present moment and play the mental game exceptionally well.

And that’s only a few examples of elite athletes who have unshakable mental toughness.

The “food poisoning game”

It’s game 5 of the 1997 NBA finals — the Chicago Bulls vs Utah Jazz.

It’s 2 am in the early hours of the morning, and Michael Jordan orders a pizza. He’s starving, and there’s only 1 place open. But what he doesn’t know is that he’ll later go on to get food poisoning, spending all day in bed, throwing up.

Most people would not play the same evening. Most people would still be in bed, wishing they could play and feeling sorry for themselves. But not Michael Jordan.

Jordan was the heart and centre of that game. He went on to score 38 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals. The Chicago Bulls moved on to game 6 and went on to win the 1997 NBA finals.

The game was labelled the famous “food poisoning game,” and to this day, nobody knows how Michael Jordan did it.

If this isn’t the most perfect example of mental toughness in Elite sport we’ve ever seen, then what is?

It may sound simple, but both winning and losing can become a mindset, and I won’t accept losing – ever. — Scottie Pippen, Former Basketball Player for The Chicago Bulls.

How to teach mental toughness

Many athletes and coaches stand firm in the belief that mental toughness is genetic — it’s a thing some athletes have. And something other athletes do not have.

And while we agree that some athletes may be naturally more mentally tough than others, coaches can still teach mental toughness in sports.

But how do you teach it, you ask?

Teach discipline and goal-directed behaviour
Use failure as an opportunity to learn
Create training scenarios to mimic competition
Use Rewire to improve mental toughness

Teach discipline and goal-directed behaviour

Expert coaches and elite athletes agree that discipline and goal-directed behaviour are essential components of mental toughness [1].

As a coach, you should use goal-setting principles to keep your athletes motivated and focused on the task at hand. So when it comes to it, they can rise up to the challenge and practise mental toughness.

You should coach your athletes on how to set SMART goals. This type of goal setting is very effective in sports and can help athletes persevere, whether rehabbing from an injury or practising their free throw.

The SMART acronym stands for [3]:

Specific: state exactly what you want to achieve or improve.
Measurable: how can you accurately measure progress?
Achievable: Is it possible? You need to be realistic.
Realistic: your goals should be challenging, but not impossible.
Time-bound: set a realistic timeframe to achieve your goals.

Use failure as an opportunity to learn

The very best athletes use failure as an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve.

And although it’s a useful tool to get better, many athletes (and everyday people) do not do well with failure.

Failure can easily knock an athlete’s self confidence, and just easily negatively impact their mental toughness.

As a coach, you should teach your athletes not to fear failure. Embracing failure is a way to get better — to find your weaknesses (as a player or a team), and ultimately provides the groundwork and motivation to do better.

Athletes do not want to make mistakes. But it’s these mistakes that allow them to learn and improve. Take Jonny Brownlee, for example; he was set to win the final race of the World Triathlon Series in Mexico back in 2016, only to encounter severe dehydration in the final stretch of the race. He would have won the race, but instead, he was carried over the finish line by his brother, Alistair, to finish second.

And what did Jonny do? He made sure not to make the same hydration mistakes again.

It’s these mistakes that can be very difficult to deal with in the moment, but are crucial mistakes to learn. It’s what creates mentally tough athletes.

Create training scenarios to mimic competition

During competition, you might notice some athletes lose motivation and subsequent mental toughness — they’re more likely to make a mistake, less likely to put in the effort, and may allow the decision from a referee to get the best of them.

Situations that zap mental toughness can be coached and mitigated in training.

For example, if an athlete loses motivation and scuffs their shots when they’re losing, create the same scenario in training to mimic competition.

Practice lapses in mental toughness and motivation in practice, and make sure they don’t happen when they matter most.

Use Rewire for teams to improve mental toughness

Coaches can use Rewire to improve focus, increase readiness for their athletes to perform, and reduce stress.

Athletes also gain access to the Athlete Platform — the ultimate toolkit to help athletes improve mindset, manage stress, and improve mental toughness in the run-up to competition.

Coaches can use Rewire to prescribe neuro-training sessions that best suit an athlete’s readiness. Athletes can also select their own neuro-training protocols to further build mental toughness and resilience. The neuro-training sessions utilises brain-endurance training protocols to help athletes build mental toughness.

And that’s not it. Coaches can use Rewire to assess athletes’ readiness scores — this allows you to adjust training load and intensity for each athlete based on how they feel mentally and physically.

“There has been huge advancements in the way we train the body for peak performance. I truly believe that the next major gains will be surrounding the brain/body connection. Rewire Fitness is an app that helps with just that.” — Matt Hanson, Professional Triathlete and Coach.

How do athletes work on mental toughness?

You can apply all the best coaching principles in the world, but at the end of the day, your athletes also need to work on their mental toughness.

They need to apply the principles and practise the habits and lessons to increase their mental toughness.

Athletes can also use tools such as Rewire, using scientifically proven neuro-training protocols to build mental toughness and resilience.

“With the app, it’s giving you a controlled environment and structure so that you can choose when you want to add mental training to your workouts, and you can do it as often as you’d like.” — Laura Kline, Elite Ultra runner & Endurance Athlete.

FAQs

How to build mental toughness in young athletes?

To build mental toughness in youth athletes, you should practise discipline and SMART goal setting. Make sure to set difficult but achievable goals for the best results.
Related: How to Build Mental Toughness in Youth Athletes

What is the best sport for mental toughness?

Virtually all sports, when done correctly, can be an excellent vessel for improving mental toughness. Although, gymnastics is often a standout sport for many, especially because athletes start training as early as 2 years old.

Can mental toughness be trained?

Yes! Mental toughness and mental resilience can be trained. And while some athletes may naturally be more mentally tough than others, the trait can certainly be improved.

References:
Fourie, S. and Potgieter, J.R., 2001. The nature of mental toughness in sport. South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation, 23(2), pp.63-72.

Liew, G.C., Kuan, G., Chin, N.S. and Hashim, H.A., 2019. Mental toughness in sport. German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research, 49(4), pp.381-394.

McCarthy, P.J. and Gupta, S., 2022. Set goals to get goals: Sowing seeds for success in sports. Frontiers for Young Minds, 10(10.3389).

How to Build Mental Toughness in Youth Athletes

February 27, 2023/in For Coaches, Guides, Training Tips /by Matthew Mace

Help youth athletes build a healthy relationship with hard work and mental toughness — here’s what you need to know.

Mental toughness is a term thrown around in abundance in the world of sports. Many people believe that those who display the highest levels of mental toughness will come out on top — they will succeed.

Although the term is almost as popular as Michael Jordan in his prime, very few people know what it actually means. After all, it is a very subjective term — people have their own definitions of what mental toughness is.

David Goggins will give you a different definition than Michael Jordan, and LeBron James will describe it differently to Tiger Words.

At Rewire, we prefer the definition of mental toughness as a personal capacity to produce consistently high levels of subjective or objective performance despite everyday challenges and stressors, as well as significant adversities [2].

Typically, mental toughness is only applied to adults and professional athletes. But what about youth athletes — should they build mental toughness to improve performance? Here’s everything that you need to know.

Mental toughness for youth athletes

If youth athletes can learn mental toughness from a young age, they can then apply this not only to sports, but to life.

Sport is a powerful vehicle for building positive habits, beliefs, and developing discipline.

But how should coaches and parents build mental toughness in the youth? Read on to find out.

Maximum effort

Great coaches should encourage maximum effort in youth athletes. However, where many coaches go wrong is by punishing or withdrawing support when the athlete does not perform to their expectations.

Instead, their maximum effort is a better gauge of performance — working hard each session will instil the importance of hard work.

Coaches should show encouragement and praise hard work to reinforce this behaviour. It’s not only a lesson that pays dividends in sports, but also in life.

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” — Michael Jordan

Encourage mistakes — they are a part of learning

We all make mistakes — it’s a part of human nature. But as a coach for young athletes, you should not discourage mistakes as they are a necessary part of learning and improving from our experiences.

If you’re a coach, allowing your athletes to make mistakes can prove difficult — you don’t want to hurt their confidence, but equally, you want them to improve and learn valuable lessons.

So, how can you encourage learning from mistakes? For optimal learning, you can increase training difficulty to the point where youth athletes make mistakes approximately 15% of the time [5].

If you increase the difficulty of training, whether learning a new skill or attempting to hit challenging splits too often at too hard a difficulty, then the cons will likely outweigh the pros, perhaps resulting in a frustrated athlete.

It’s all about finding a healthy balance between success and learning from mistakes to become a better athlete.

I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.” — Serena Williams

Build a solid foundation by emphasising sports to be fun

As a coach, you want your athletes to succeed. But at a young age, it’s important for sports to be fun — this encourages a balance between physical fitness, psychological well-being, and lifelong lessons and learning [4].

Children and youth athletes participate in sports to have fun. If, at an early age, they do not enjoy sports, they might be less likely to continue participation in that sport (and others).

Coaches and parents should prioritise sports participation to be fun. All too commonly, parents and coaches skew the goal implicitly or explicitly in the hopes of a scholarship, that the child will become a professional athlete, or as a parent, to achieve unfulfilled childhood dreams [1].

For example, imagine a twelve-year-old showing up to training twice a week and being told to run as fast as they can twelve times around the track. That’s not a fun session — and while they may do it, if they are not having fun, they’re less likely to go back.

But if you can build a foundation for the athlete, prioritising fun with hard work sprinkled throughout, the athlete is more likely to stick with the sport, learn valuable lessons along the way, and perhaps even avoid burnout. That’s a big win in our book.

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually, it will subside, and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” — Lance Armstrong

Create a healthy training environment

To get the most out of a youth athlete, coaches and parents should foster a healthy training environment.

As previously stated, training should be fun. It doesn’t mean it can’t include difficult aspects, but first and foremost, it needs to be fun. The training environment needs to reflect that — incorporate games into training, be there after training and competition if your athletes want to talk to you, and create a place that kids and youth athletes look forward to coming to.

And if a child wants to do multiple sports, encourage them to.

There’s a whole debate surrounding multiple sport diversification vs. early sport specialisation in one sport. But ultimately, being told they can only do one sport may increase their risk of burnout, injury, and other risk factors [3].

Besides, trying other sports is also fun! And this is the ultimate goal for youth sports — it is also likely to encourage mental toughness.

“Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence.” — David Goggins

Key takeaways

Developing mental toughness from an early age can help youth athletes push through pain, learn from their mistakes, and ultimately become better athletes. But the benefits span far beyond sports — they also transfer to life, teaching self-discipline, hard work, and not giving up.

To build mental toughness in youth athletes, coaching and parental figures should:

Teach the importance of hard work and effort
Keep training fun and exciting
Create a healthy training environment
Do not discourage multi-sport participation

And if you’re looking to take it a step further, you can try the Rewire neuro buttons and neuro training app — create a fun cognitive game for youth athletes. This helps train mental toughness and is a great tool for youth athletes looking to compete at the highest level.

Want to know more about how Rewire can improve your athlete’s mental toughness? Book a free consultation call with our team today!

References

Brenner, J.S. and Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, 2007. Overuse injuries, overtraining, and burnout in child and adolescent athletes. Pediatrics, 119(6), pp.1242-1245.
Gucciardi, D.F., Hanton, S., Gordon, S., Mallett, C.J. and Temby, P., 2015. The concept of mental toughness: Tests of dimensionality, nomological network, and traitness. Journal of personality, 83(1), pp.26-44.
Gustafsson, H., Kenttä, G. and Hassmén, P., 2011. Athlete burnout: An integrated model and future research directions. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 4(1), pp.3-24.
Merkel, D.L., 2013. Youth sport: positive and negative impact on young athletes. Open access journal of sports medicine, pp.151-160.
Wilson, R.C., Shenhav, A., Straccia, M. and Cohen, J.D., 2019. The eighty five percent rule for optimal learning. Nature communications, 10(1), p.4646.