Psychology of endurance sports - mental toughness
When it comes to peak performance in sports, just being better physically doesn’t really give you an edge anymore.
With the improvements in training, nutrition, and injury prevention, psychology is one more tool many elite athletes have taken into consideration when trying to get an edge over their opponents.
This week we will cover some of the fascinating aspects of the psychology in (endurance) sports and we will start with - mental toughness.
Mental toughness
How many times have you watched a game and observed an athlete make a split second decision or dig deep and overcome their opponents or push themselves hard to accomplish something truly amazing?
More often than not, we will say that a certain athlete is mentally tough. They work harder, stay calm under pressure, and seem to ignore any cue their body is giving them to stop or give up.
Mental toughness can be something you are born with or you can acquire it over a period of time but there are different views on what mental toughness is and how it is manifested in life.
The psychologists’ view
As sport became a bigger part of our lives, psychologist started to get more and more interested into the psychological aspects of sports. As the field developed there have been many studies that dived into understanding some of the key components that make someone successful and one of those findings was mental toughness.
In a study by Graham Jones at the university of Wales in 2002 they interviewed international athletes who represented their countries at different sporting events and in the end came to a two step definition of mental toughness:
“Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to:
- Generally, cope better than your opponents with the many demands that sport places on a performer
- Specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident and in control under pressure”
This definition focuses mostly on one person being better than another. However, not all endurance athletes focus on beating their opponents. Many have a desire to push themselves to the absolute limit and, if possible, beyond.
That’s why the second definition, although a little more general, is a little more precise when determining what mental toughness is.
“An unshakable perseverance and conviction towards some goal despite pressure or adversity”
Now with beating your opponents and simply winning out of the equation, we are now focusing more on realising someone’s goal and this gives even people who will never have the physical capabilities to win in major sporting events a tool to realise personal goals.
A pros’ view
When it comes to the pros, things aren’t a lot different but one thing is clear. Mental toughness means a lot of things to different athletes. For some it’s the simple drive to push through hard situations and winning is just a by-product of that while some see only winning as the reason to push themselves to the absolute limit.
If they are hurting and think of giving up, they just need to see the faces of their opponents and their pain to know that there is still room to go harder.
We have seen many situations where two athletes raced to the finish line only to collapse and not be able to move a millimeter once everything is over.
But mental toughness isn’t only displayed during a race. It’s the ability to push on every single training session and say “Let’s go one more round” when it really hurts and then follow through. To stay after a training session and then stay for another hour to practice a certain move or sequence for the millionth time is a true display of mental toughness.
Whatever it is. Pros and amateurs can get better and these things and how to do this will be explored in the next four blog posts.
NOTE: The basis for this week's series has been the book Ultra Performance by Paul Moore. I encourage you to get a copy and read it for yourself.