Summer 2024
Developing mental strength in athletes
Strength & conditioning coaches (SCC) are tasked with preparing an athlete for the demands of performance and optimizing outputs.
However, peak performance is not solely reached through physical preparation. Mental strength enables athletes to progress toward goals while maintaining mental fortitude through uncapped failures and experiences. As a result, your role as the SCC goes beyond physical training.
Part I: DISCOVER
Before integrating this approach, as an SCC, you must understand how important it is to maintain self-awareness and preserve the ability to be cognizant when your behaviors do or do not align with your internal standards. Self-awareness plays a substantial role in the type of environment you want to create for you and your athletes. Understanding more about yourself and your values allows you to be more steadfast and confident in your leadership approach.
Let’s consider two questions and think about them as guides to help discover or rediscover internal standards and values.
- Who are you?
- Discover traits and behaviors you may currently possess or can develop that will help support your leadership capabilities: great listener, trustworthy, respectful, compassionate, adaptable, selfless, humble, proactive, positive, authentic, consistent, confident, and empathetic.
- What are you doing?
- Finding effective leadership strategies that make clear what you value and prioritize:
- Modeling behaviors that you want to see and awareness of body language
- Giving feedback and self-reflection
- Asking questions, connecting, and building relationships
- Educating and accountability
- Teaching, measuring, and evaluating progress and behaviors toward individual goals
- Daily practices and habits
- Shared language for healthier communication and understanding
Part II: MENTAL STRENGTH DEVELOPMENT
Mental strength can be classified as a skill. More so, mental strength encompasses a wide range of attributes that demand repeated, consistent efforts to be effective. However, you cannot assume that your athletes know how to do it. It is up to you to bring awareness to its importance. Let’s break down the components that build mental strength and how you, the SCC, can integrate and cultivate these attributes within your athlete training program.
RESILIENCE
Resilience is a state of mind that is improved by consistency. Therefore, staying steadfast in your coaching approach will go a long way in holding your athletes accountable. Showing your athletes resilience through progressive overload while keeping track of progress will allow them to witness their progression and growth throughout their development. Also, resilience can be fortified by introducing your athletes to goal setting to preserve their overall focus.
FOCUS & CONCENTRATION
It is of the utmost importance to manage the environment and distractions. Employ a list of standards that enable athletes to bring more focus to training sessions. Some examples include no phones or food in the weight room, constant communication (calling out & echoing sets and reps as a team), and arriving early to prepare for the sessions. Also, correcting any bad body language and eye contact during instruction is effective in allowing increased focus and concentration.
CONFIDENCE
Being aware of your body language and how your communication is given and received by your athletes can have a profound effect on your athletes’ mood and confidence. Being confident when you speak about your program’s purpose and intentions, through training cycles, reinforces expectations. Continuously ask yourself if your vision is clear and if your athletes can see your vision as well. Giving your athletes a sense of autonomy will support decision-making and communication skills. Couple that with celebrating small wins and making them a big deal when appropriate will yield confidence too.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
How do you handle conflict? How are you seen handling conflict? Some training days can be exceptionally tough, and emotions can become heightened. You can choose to prepare your athletes for those tough days by letting them know what to expect so that mental preparation happens and emotions can be controlled. On the other hand, you can choose to maintain unpredictability and address any emotions to bring awareness to the athlete(s). One way to address those emotional moments is to ask questions and allow your athletes to speak openly and candidly. Relationship building allows you to be a more proactive SCC by knowing how certain athletes may respond to certain stressors.
STRESS MANAGEMENT
How are you handling the pressures of your job, athletes, colleagues, and coaches? You may not be able to see energy, but it is everywhere, which is why you can feel tension or negativity at times. One of the truest statements that you can echo and teach your athletes is that everything cannot be controlled, but your presence when you walk into a room can be controlled. Teaching your athletes coping strategies and skills yields the best results when it comes to stress. Some examples are breath technique work, the “it takes a village” mentality, counseling, mindfulness, meditation strategies, and consistent recovery methods. Prioritizing is a beneficial skill and will mitigate daily stressors.
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ADAPTABILITY
Do your athletes catch you when you must pivot or when there is unpredictability? Do you succumb to pressure? One example of facilitating adaptability within your programming is through utilizing competitive scenarios. For example, adding different obstacles or changing rules in untimely moments with the intention that athletes must work together and problem-solve to accomplish goals.
Mental strength is a critical component of athletic success by accounting for factors such as resilience, focus, confidence, emotional regulation, stress management, and adaptability. However, before influencing athletes with these factors, the SCC must be consistently self-aware to provide authenticity and strategy to this holistic approach. In turn, physical and mental strength can be developed and fortified over time.
