Achieving a new goal or reaching an elite level in sport requires more than just talent and physical ability. It requires mental strength to push through adversity when physical training inevitably becomes more and more difficult.
As with physical strength, to improve your mental strength, you must train. Mental training, however, requires a different skillset than physical training, but the two are intertwined.
Mental training prepares the mind to help you perform at your best, mentally and physically. Mental factors such as confidence, focus, self-belief, and motivation are crucial to athletic performance and can help take an athlete to the next level if the physical ability is already there.
Just like you would go to the gym to work on your physical skills, it’s important to designate time to improving your ‘mental muscles’ that enable you to get the most out of your physical ability. The five primary mental muscles are: motivation, confidence, intensity, focus, and mind state.
- Motivation: Motivation is your determination and drive to achieve a goal. There are some strategies you can employ to help your motivation in the short run like setting and reminding yourself of your goals for the coming season, having a training partner or something as simple as listening to motivating music.
- Confidence: Confidence is developed from several sources including being maximally prepared to can fix problems that arise and staying positive when things aren’t going well.
- Intensity: Intensity is the level of physiological activity you feel in your body including heart rate, respiration, blood flow, and adrenaline. Somewhere in between very relaxed and very anxious is the level of intensity at which you can perform your best. This level can vary for everyone.
- Focus: Focus involves paying attention to things that will help you perform your best and avoiding distractions that interfere with your performing well. Your ability to stay focused from start to finish will determine how well you perform and whether you will be able to stay consistent from the start to finish.
- Mind State: An aggressive mindset focuses on attacking and ‘bringing it’ and getting really fired up mentally. A calm mindset is typically best for athletes who get nervous before they compete. A clear mind involves having basically nothing going on in your mind before you perform; this is most suited for athletes who are intuitive, free spirited, and experienced.
There are many other important mental skills that will contribute to your mental training. Here are some other tips to improve your mental strength:
- Set goals and create a positive long-term vision
- Use imagery and visualization to work on competitive skills
- Focus your concentration and attention
- Gain experience with adversity
- Improve error management
- Develop a positive approach to competition
To help sport clubs and coaches work on mental training with their athletes, organizations like the National Coaching Certificate Program (NCCP) offer resources like the Basic Mental Skills Course. This course, for example, provides coaches with the ability to recognize signs that an athlete may need to improve their goal setting, focus, and anxiety control skills as well as develop tools to help the athlete make improvements in these areas. Courses like this that teach coaches how to run basic guided activities that help athletes improve basic mental skills can be instrumental in improving on-field performance and creating a positive environment that reduces burnout and keeps athletes in sport.
Over the last year the Covid-19 pandemic has interrupted sport, affecting the mental health of athletes at all levels. A study published in the International Journal of Exercise Science looked at the relationship between providing mental toughness workshops after the interruption of sport in American college athletics and the mental health of student athletes.
The study found that after attending a “wellness series” designed to provide workshops to improve mental toughness, students who self-assessed as having higher mental toughness also self-assessed as having better mental health. This study provides context to the importance of mental training, specifically in the context of a return to sport.
As sport rebounds from the pandemic, it will be important for sport organizations and coaches to focus on mental training to ensure athletes are well equipped to return to their best once again after long periods away from sport.