Mental toughness explained

Alot of material has been written on “mental toughness” and its importance in relationship to giving the top sports people that winning edge. Top professionals seem to embrace mental toughness coaches yet few teams or individuals in the younger and “up and coming ranks” seem to embrace how important it is to build a tougher mentality or at the very least equip player and athletes with the coping skills.

Some research has said that the term “mental toughness” has been loosely bandied about and there is not a lot of clarity as to what mental toughness, in relation to sport at least, actually is.

This prompted me to ask the question: “Is mental toughness really the winning ingredient?”

Well, from what I can make out, when one puts all the pieces together, reading article after article, the confusion is not so much about whether it’s important enough, but how it is defined.

In research this group expresses that, “The literature on mental toughness is characterised by a general lack of conceptual clarity and consensus as to its definition, as well as a general failure to operationalise the construct in a consistent manner!”

In another paper by Hones et al, 2002, it states, “mental toughness has been described as one of the most used, but least understood terms in applied sport psychology”.

This prompted me to think about what real mental toughness is – what is it that makes top professional footballers the exception rather than the rule?

In research I can really relate to, sports scientists from the University of Lincoln, UK, and Liverpool’s John Moores University interviewed academy coaches at an unnamed Premier League club to understand the psychological qualities which marked out talented individuals for greatness.

The research reveals that that there is a “mental edge” that drives Premier League players to succeed from a very young age and part of their success and mental edge can be attributed to these three factors and how to improve them.