By Jared Samuelson
(October 5, 2022)

With the rising emphasis on mental health, parents, coaches, and teachers are having a difficult time helping people build mental toughness while caring for their mental health. The new age question becomes; how hard can I challenge this person without hurting them mentally? In this new age of parenting, coaching, and teaching, mental toughness is still a vital skill needed in order to be successful in whatever a person does. Mental toughness cannot take a backseat just because mental health has become more prominent today (and rightfully so). They must be able to co-exist.

The Importance of Mental Health

May is the official mental health awareness month and in sport, college and big-time professional athletes are coming out with their testimonies on their struggles with mental health. These are athletes who seem like they have everything in the world, and yet they struggle with mental health issues. According to a study, 33% of all college students experience significant symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions, and yet only 10% of college athletes seek help (Kuik, 2019).

Recently, the sports world has been stunned by the passing of college athletes due to their mental health. A Stanford University soccer player, a University of Wisconsin track and field athlete, and a James Madison University softball catcher all lost their lives due to mental health issues. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and NBA star Kevin Love are among multiple professional athletes who have spoken up about issues they have had with mental health, and how they are finding ways to help combat them for others. So clearly, mental health is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. If someone cannot take care of themselves first, there is no way they can care for others.

Throughout the 1950s to the early 2010s, coaches had a long leash when it came to how they ran their programs and treated their players. Coaches were deemed gritty and tough if they made their players puke from running so much, held four-hour-long practices, threw things at the players to make them tougher, or mentally abuse them so they would grow stronger. These types of coaches were put on a pedestal. They were the idol that all other coaches should go after. That is the challenge coaches and leaders have today: how to instill mental toughness in athletes while still caring for and protecting their mental health. Brookhouse et al. (2016) concluded that the overall theme in helping a coach build mental toughness in his/her athletes is to be mindful

Building Mental Toughness by Being Mindful

Mental toughness has always been a part of everyday life, but it has been magnified through sports. Society usually lauds athletes who seem to never be shaken no matter the circumstances. It is difficult to define mental toughness. It is also not an exact science. In fact, mental toughness has been described as one of the most used but least understood terms in applied sport psychology (Connaughton et al., 2007). Building mental toughness is hard to do, but it is near impossible to do it without someone helping you. Brookhouse et al. (2016) reported that coaches perceived themselves as playing an important role in developing mentally tough athletes. Building mental toughness in today’s athletes involves building relationships and developing autonomy.

Building Relationships

The most important trait a coach can have is the ability to create relationships. That is a major key to being able to build mental toughness without destroying mental health. The coaches who regularly get the best from their athletes are extremely demanding. They demand effort, energy, and time. The great coaches know how to be critical but still be encouraging. Think of a bank account. One has to invest in the bank account before they are able to withdraw and take money out. A coach must invest in a relationship with his/her players before being able to criticize and demand from them (withdraw). Having no relationship will hurt mental health and will not build any toughness. Relationships are the key to mental health and mental toughness being able to co-exist.

Another key is for coaches to treat athletes as people, not just as an investment of money or a sportsperson. A sense of purpose and belonging matters to athletes. If athletes are made to feel like they are defined by their sport and the rest of their daily life does not matter, it will have a negative impact on their mental health. Again, this comes back to building relationships with athletes. A coach should get to know what they like to do outside of sports, their hobbies, their families, their friends, etc. This will help build that mental health and, in turn, help be able to start building mental toughness when it matters.

Another way for mental toughness and mental health to co-exist is for a coach to help his athletes grow independently or develop autonomy. The more a coach can teach athletes to be ready, work hard, and play with effort independently, the more mentally tough they will become. Athletes cannot rely on coaches, teammates, or the crowd to get their energy level up and ready to play a game. Athletes need to be able to independently work themselves to who they want to be while accepting help from the outside. This is mental toughness.

One way a coach can help teach this independence is by letting players take control of certain situations in practice. When a problem occurs or practice is not going well, rather than the coach always talking and taking points, he can sit back and let one of the leaders of the team address the issue. Not only will this help build mental toughness in that leader, but it will also help build team chemistry and a sense of belonging.

Common Approaches to Building Mental Toughness

There is no secret science formula that coaches can use that is foolproof on how to build the most mentally tough athlete every single time. Some methods may work great for one athlete but may not even crack the code of another athlete. Over the years, there have been common themes that coaches have practiced that seem to have a high success rate in building mental toughness in athletes. Butt et al. (2011) found that mental toughness is the ability to handle pressure, deal with adversity, and rebound from failures.

Ability to Handle Pressure

Two words come to mind when being able to handle pressure: focus and confidence. Pressure is something made up by the individual where he/she feels obligated to perform to a certain standard. Many times, athletes fail in high-pressure situations because they are not focused. Their mind wanders to what may happen if they fail, or they are too focused on the magnitude of the shot they are about to shoot, or what the crowd is doing. The player who is able to focus on the moment is usually the player who succeeds in those high-pressure situations.

From a coaching standpoint, the question becomes how can coaches help their athletes to focus better. Coaches can hold players accountable in practice to stay on task and be efficient in what they are doing. Teach them to stay focused at all times. Another reason that athletes tend to fail in high-pressure situations is due to a lack of self-confidence. Having confidence and knowing that one has done everything that he or she can do, to prepare, having expectations, helps one be mentally tough (Butt et al., 2011)

Athletes need to have confidence in themselves. It does not matter if a coach, a parent, or the entire arena has confidence in the player; if the players do not have confidence in themselves, there is no hope. Self-confidence can be coached and taught. Encouraging players and giving them the freedom to make mistakes will grow their confidence. If a player knows that they can play free without constant repercussions, and they know that the head coach believes in their ability to play, their confidence goes through the roof. And a lot of times so does their performance. Coaches who can instill confidence in their players will help them be able to overcome high-pressure situations, and therefore, grow tough mentally

Adversity

Adversity is the greatest tool a coach can use to build mental toughness in athletes. The best way to prepare for games is to make practices even harder. If a coach is trying to build mental toughness in the midst of a game, it is not the right environment to do so, and it is too late. Mental toughness must be built in the off-season and in practice. This is done through adversity. Putting athletes at a disadvantage in practice and expecting a good result is a great way to showcase adversity. When game time rolls around, it seems easier to the players because the coach made it harder in practice. Players will not be rattled as easily due to a crowd or a bad officiating call. The coach has already exposed them to those scenarios and built that mental toughness beforehand. Mental toughness takes time to build and requires adversity hits over and over again to grow and mature as a person and a player.

Rebounding from Failures

Mentally tough players do not see failure as a setback, they see failure as an opportunity to learn, grow, and get better. The coach’s job is to point out mistakes that are made so that they can be fixed and improved upon. But there needs to be a balance between critical feedback and allowing players to grow from mistakes on their own. Take basketball for example. If an athlete runs the wrong play or executes a scouting report poorly, a coach needs to point that out so the athlete knows their mistake and can learn from it. But let’s say the athlete misses a big shot. The coach does not need to harp on him/her for that miss because the athlete already knows that they messed up. In this situation, the coach needs to encourage the player to move on and continue to have confidence in their shot. This will help the athlete learn from it and be better the next time they miss a shot. Learning how to avoid dwelling on mistakes is a step toward developing mental toughness.

Conclusion

Mental health is more prominent than ever, but the importance of mental toughness to the success of athletes in their sport and their lives has not dwindled. There is a way that a coach can have the best of both worlds, but it is extremely challenging to achieve this. It takes relationship building and encouragement along with adversity and learning from failures to allow the development of mental toughness to co-exist with mental health.

References

Brookhouse, E., Freysinger, V., Mellano, K., & Weinberg, R. (2016). Building mental

toughness: perceptions of sport psychologists. The Sport Psychologist, 30, 231-241.

Butt, J., Culp, B., & Weinberg, R. (2011). Coaches’ views of mental toughness and how it is

built. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 9, 156-172.

Connaughton, D., Hanton, S., & Jones, G. (2007). A framework of mental toughness in the world’s best performers. Sport Psychologist, 21(2), 243-264.  

Kuik, R. (2019). Mental health & athletes. Athletes for Hope. https://www.athletesforhope.org/2019/05/mental-health-and-athletes/