What Is Mental Toughness

.What is Mental Toughness

By Evan Richtsfeld

Mental toughness is defined as having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to generally cope better than your opponents with the many demands (e.g., competition, training, lifestyle) that are placed on you as a performer. Specifically, to be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, resilient, and in control under pressure (Jones et al, 2002). I believe that mental toughness plays an imperative roll in an athlete’s success. There are many characteristics that a mentally a tough person exudes and must possess to ever be on the top of his or her game.

To be a mentally strong athlete one must posses a strong self-belief in themselves. Having an unshakable belief in your ability to achieve competition goals is a very unique quality that allows one to better than your opponents. If you cant believe in your abilities to achieve goals then how can you expects to perform at you best when even you don’t believe you can achieve what you’ve set out to accomplish.

“Mental toughness is doing whatever is necessary to get the job done including handling the demands of a

tough workout, withstanding pain, or touching an opponent out at the end of a race.”

– Jennifer Eberst, Women’s Swimming& Diving

Another quality that I find to be very important in a mentally strong individual is motivation. Motivation is the feeling inside a person that pushes him to achieve his best and set out to accomplish goals. Motivation is that ability to bounce back from performance setbacks with amplified determination to succeed. For example, many people told probably told former Red Wings goalie Manny Legace that he was too small to ever succeed as a goalie. If Legace didn’t have that drive within himself to work as hard as he possibly could then he would have never made it to the NHL and never would have had the career success that he experienced. To be a mentally...