What is MENTAL TOUGHNESS?

Mental Toughness: What Is It, and Can It Be Trained?

What is mental toughness?

Can it be built?

Can it be trained?

If so, what are the best ways to do it?

Between my observations that there are undoubtedly people with higher levels of mental toughness than others, and how often I hear about coaches attempting to build mental toughness through difficult conditioning exercises, it’s a topic I find myself pondering often.

So what is the point of this blog?

I think my point is to develop a clearer picture of what mental toughness is—and what it isn’t.

I also think it’s important for us to fight misinformation when we are qualified to do so. And this topic has A LOT of misinformation surrounding it.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is how difficult it is to actually prove or disprove whether anything can increase or decrease a person’s level of mental toughness.

The entire concept is built around relative terms. There is nothing concrete to measure. No real way to definitively prove or disprove much of anything.

In my years as a performance coach, I’ve noticed that, generally speaking, the more a concept is built around relative terms, the more confusion there tends to be surrounding it.

This leads to a lot of “because we’ve always done it that way” situations, which can result in some less-than-optimal performance-building methods being used under the guise of making the athlete better.

So What Is Mental Toughness?

A quick Google search results in the following:

“Mental toughness is a personality trait that measures a person’s ability to perform well under pressure, and to persevere in the face of challenges. It can be defined as a combination of resilience, confidence, and the ability to control emotions.”

Sounds about right to me.

To me, a mentally tough person is stone-faced when the world is collapsing around them. When the proverbial bullets are flying.

The very first example I think of is a baseball pitcher on the mound when he cannot find the strike zone.

A hitter who just struck out with the bases loaded and his team down three.

A fielder who just bombed a routine throw into the bleachers, scoring the go-ahead run.

How do these players respond?

Do they spin out of control to the point that there is no hope for them to accomplish anything positive?

Oftentimes, yes.

I happen to be friends with Coach Bill Mosiello, hitting coach and RC for TCU. He was the manager for the Arkansas Travelers when Mike Trout was there. At the time, they were the Angels’ Double-A affiliate.

He once told me that of all the amazing things Mike could do—and there are a lot—the most impressive was his ability to handle failure.

He could strike out looking in the bottom of the seventh with the bases loaded and his team down three, calmly walk back to the dugout, take off his batting gloves, put up his helmet and bat, grab his glove, go back onto the field and make a spectacular play.

Why?

Because he wasn’t mentally rattled.

THAT is mental toughness.

It’s the “get them next time” mentality.

Mentally, baseball is an incredibly taxing sport.

In other sports, when you make a mistake, you may get to leave the field, or the action immediately moves the other way. There is much less time to dwell on what just happened.

Baseball—a sport predominantly won by the team that fails the least—stops when you make a mistake.

Everybody stares at you.

The magnifying glass just gets bigger, closer, hotter and more intense.

When we find ourselves in these situations, we are insanely uncomfortable. Our brain is begging for anything that will make the misery stop. It can become so powerful that throwing up your hands and walking off the field in defeat can briefly feel like a viable option.

Your breathing is out of control.

And all you can do is envision more failure.

“And all you can do is envision more failure.”

Don’t forget that sentence. It’s VERY important.

Very few of us don’t melt down in those situations.

The funny thing is, I have met athletes whom I would not consider particularly mentally tough who do not break down in those situations. They can practically look at you and smile.

Why?

I think that, in those situations, the athlete has a very good mental grasp on the real world versus sports. They realize that performing poorly is not the end of the world.

On the other hand, I have known multiple guys—and this is not at all an isolated incident—who can tough out levels of conditioning that make me nauseous just thinking about them, yet will completely break down mentally in the face of on-field failure.

Why?

I don’t know.

But from my viewpoint, it’s pretty damning to the idea that conditioning builds the type of mental toughness we actually want our athletes to have.

Especially when you consider the increased injury potential that comes with excessive conditioning.

Bottom line—and remember that sentence from earlier—mentally tough people are able to:

• Make the bad thoughts stop.

• Ignore the bad thoughts.

• Or never begin having the bad thoughts in the first place.

Mentally WEAK people LISTEN to the bad thoughts. Some even invite them in.

When this happens, they will inevitably be consumed by those thoughts, and failure becomes the only option they can envision.

Can Mental Toughness Be Built With Conditioning?

Before we go any further, let’s address this since I’ve already touched on it.

Can mental toughness be built through conditioning?

Personally, I think the only time conditioning may significantly build mental toughness is when a person has never done much difficult conditioning before.

In that situation, it may help build a baseline or foundation of mental toughness because the person is learning that basic discipline can result in good things.

But I also believe the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quickly.

I’ve often joked that excessive conditioning doesn’t build mental toughness—but having to deal with the coach forcing you to do the excessive conditioning might build some.

But I digress…..😁

So what makes me think mental toughness cannot be built effectively through excessive conditioning?

Mainly, the examples I gave above.

I’ve seen them A LOT.

But also because when I envision a mentally tough person, they are exhibiting personality traits that I don’t see being trained when someone is simply being forced to perform excessive conditioning exercises.

Mental toughness is discipline of the mind.

Doing something that sucks because a coach will punish you further if you don’t do it is NOT discipline.

Having said that, a person putting THEMSELVES through difficult conditioning is a COMPLETELY different situation.

That can definitely build mental toughness, in my opinion.

But there are safer ways.

If we’re being honest, I think my real point is this:

Maybe conditioning does build some mental toughness, but there are methods out there that are better, more effective and less likely to cause an injury.

So what are some ways I believe can increase mental toughness?

As I stated earlier, I don’t believe there is a way to definitively prove or disprove that any of these methods work.

But I do have a few hypotheses.

1. Ice Baths

This is the one I am most confident can build mental toughness—but it has to be done a certain way.

And I think this is a very important point to take away from this entire discussion:

Regardless of how someone goes about trying to build mental toughness, the HOW is much more important than the WHAT.

The toughness is not built simply by putting the body into ice water.

The mental toughness is created by IGNORING the outside stimulus that is creating extreme discomfort.

This begs the question:

Couldn’t this be done while the team is conditioning?

Technically, I suppose.

But here’s the problem.

Excessive conditioning can come with a cost:

• Increased injury potential.

• Valuable practice time.

• Valuable practice productivity, because everything becomes sloppy when athletes are exhausted.

• The weight we fought so hard to put on.

• The strength we fought so hard to build.

Not to mention, they are often complaining about the situation the entire time you’re making them do it.

Mental toughness is being able to ignore the sucky situation.

If athletes spend the entire conditioning session acknowledging and complaining about how bad the situation sucks, what exactly are we training?

In a way, we’re practicing how to acknowledge and complain about a bad situation.

And practicing how to complain about a bad situation is not building mental toughness.

A person who constantly acknowledges the discomfort is more likely to acknowledge and dwell on failure on the field.

They need to learn how to not let those thoughts in, because once those thoughts take over, eventually they will melt down.

The athlete who can remain stone-faced when things become extremely uncomfortable is much less likely to melt down.

I feel very comfortable with this hypothesis.

Try this quick little exercise. I think it will help make my point clearer.

Envision yourself, your kid or your favorite athlete completely stone-faced while sinking into an ice bath.

Now imagine that same person having just walked the bases loaded with his team clinging to a two-run lead.

Imagine his face and body language while having a meltdown.

Now, instead, imagine him with the same facial expression he had while ignoring the discomfort of the ice bath.

Which version of that athlete has the best chance of getting his team out of the inning?

Exactly.

2. General Self-Discipline

This topic comes to my mind every year around Halloween.

As I write this, it is about 5 PM on October 31, 2024.

There is a massive bowl of candy in our kitchen. It has become a “thing” for me each year to not eat one single piece of candy.

This takes a lot of mental toughness for me.

I am a sugar addict. I have been since I was a child.

To be clear, I’m not being funny or lighthearted when I say I’m a sugar addict. It’s not a cute little vice for me. Sugar changes me. It changes my behavior and my thoughts.

So it takes work for me to not eat Halloween candy.

I don’t think this exact method would work for someone who doesn’t have a pretty severe addiction to sugar, but the same principle could apply to anything that person has been known to overindulge in.

I believe very strongly that this reinforces mental toughness for me.

It reminds me how much better I feel when I push through. It helps me remember that the pain of discipline doesn’t hurt nearly as much as my mind is telling me it will.

This WILL NOT work if you force someone to do it.

Long story short, I don’t think you can simply create a situation for another person and expect it to build usable mental toughness.

I just don’t believe it works that way.

And the ones who seek me out to tell me how wrong I am about this are often the ones who prefer the status quo. They’re good as long as they can pretend they’re doing the right thing.

What Else Can Build Mental Toughness?

What are a few other ways I believe we can build mental toughness, especially in teenage athletes?

Practically any initiative they take on their own to better their situation should contribute to their level of mental toughness.

Examples include routine building:

Studying.

Training at EAP daily.

Learning to eat better.

Daily prayer and meditation.

Deciding on their own to keep a tidier room.

Practically anything that we know is a good idea but doesn’t immediately provide positive feedback.

Do you know why people eat too much junk, struggle with porn addiction and endlessly scroll TikTok?

Because those things make them feel good immediately.

That doesn’t take mental toughness.

Mental toughness is saying no to those things.

Mental toughness is:

Setting a goal.

Creating daily habits that will help you stick with that goal.

And, most importantly, ignoring the devil on your shoulder when he tells you to blow those things off.

That, to me, is mental toughness.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Michael Richards

Owner, Elite Athletic Performance LLC