top of page

HOW DO YOU DEFINE MENTAL TOUGHNESS?

Joe Kenn | Vice President of Performance Education




How do you define mental toughness? Defining the term “mental toughness” in my opinion is one of the hardest things to achieve. I consider this a “coach speak” term. If you ask ten coaches what their thoughts are you could get ten unique answers. Discussing this term with experts who study sports psychology and other areas of personality traits, the conversations lead to there may not be a single definition of mental toughness. Mental Toughness may be the summation of concepts and terms that define certain characteristics and values that a coach or person in leadership is looking for in their athletes or clients.


For example, in the book Toughness by Jay Bilas (highly recommend), each of the ten chapters in his book represent a specific action or character trait. Trust, Preparation, Courage, Communication, Persistence, Next Play, Commitment, Acceptance, Resilience, and Self-evaluation. It wasn’t until late in my career that I came to finality of the what mental toughness meant to a coach because I didn’t believe in the term. When I would speak to a coach and tell them what I thought could be developed in a weight room setting, resiliency, work ethic, mental fortitude, team work, peer leadership, commitment, etc., their reply would be well that’s part of mental toughness.


In the end, I can agree to disagree, but I now accept mental toughness as a coach speak term which sums up what I believe is important in the athlete or clients personality make up. This topic always sparks interesting discussions. I look forward to learning how you define mental toughness.


Best Success and #wordswin

Coach Kenn

3 Comments


monapo5825
Jul 24, 2023

This is a great article, I completely agree with you that every day I make new discoveries for myself, mental health is very important and plays a key role in our lives. When we had a presentation at work, I took this topic, but since I am not very good at creating a presentation, I left it to real professionals https://slidepeak.com/pitch-deck-design who made me a presentation - the best one that was presented at our event, it raised me in the eyes of colleagues and management, I even had a raise in salary, it inspired me a lot, to discover even more, as today I discovered your blog, which I am incredibly happy about.

Like

fodami6511
May 31, 2023

I completely agree with you, psychological resilience is the term that can best define the degree of an athlete, as a novice coach I was very interested in learning more about this topic, and in general about the topic of physiology, that I even started writing about it at the beginning of my journey, my friends helped me https://www.nursingpaper.com/, who introduced me to this topic in more detail by writing me several custom texts on topics such as sports psychology, sports heart and muscle endurance. That helped me to realize new concepts and start looking at things from a different angle, for which I am very grateful to them, and thank you for your article, which reveals such a significant…

Like

Billi Jean
Billi Jean
Apr 06, 2023

Hello, usually in order to determine psychological stability and solve some mental problems, I work with professional psychologists from an online service where I can get qualified advice. I try LGBT counseling https://us.calmerry.com/try-lgbt-counseling/ and was pleased with the result because I began to feel more confident. In my opinion, this is the best way to get an objective assessment of the psychological state and identify problems at an early stage. This is truly a modern approach to mental health. After all, each consultation takes place online and it’s more convenient for me.


Like
bottom of page