| Mental Toughness |
Developing Self-Awareness
By Erika Carlson
Mental Toughness: Some have it. Some don’t. If you believe this, stop reading now.
However, if you believe that mental toughness is teachable and you want to learn how to help develop it in your players, read on.
The concept of mental toughness, even the psychological pillar as a whole, often seems more elusive than the other three pillars of soccer development (tactical, technical and physical). The most common reason for this is that coaches were not directly taught mental skills when they were players. Additionally, most have limited practical knowledge on how to coach the mental aspects of the game. Therefore, it was the case that some players were more mentally tough than others, just as some players are more physically talented than others. Times are changing. Sport psychology slowly is making its way into the world of soccer, right down to the youth level, and mental toughness can be developed, just like technical skills. There are practical and simple ways for coaches to enhance the mental toughness of their players. Let’s begin by examining the definition of mental toughness.
Jones et al. (2002) provide a useful definition of mental toughness:
Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to
• Cope better than your opponents with demands; competitive, training and lifestyle
• Be more consistent and better than opponents in remaining; determined, focused, confident, resilient, composed under pressure.
Developing mental toughness provides coaches some unique challenges. One of the first challenges is getting athletes to learn from themselves as they progress. Self-awareness is the foundation of learning and development. Athletes need to develop awareness of what they are thinking about and feeling emotionally (mental and emotional awareness) and also what they are feeling physically (kinesthetic awareness). It often is the case that athletes develop this through both trial and error and feedback from coaches.
There is an additional way to increase self-awareness. Reflective practice is a relatively simple but incredibly effective process that allows athletes to exploit all playing experiences for their benefit. This writing task aids players in enhancing both their kinesthetic and mental and emotional awareness during both training and competing.
This process can be incorporated into training by coaches, and many will find it useful to practice what they preach and commit to doing self-reflection exercises for themselves. The process of reflective practice is best explained by Gibbs’ (1988) six-staged model of reflective practice.
Following training and games players need to answer the following questions. Reflections should consider technical performance, tactical performance, physical performance and psychological performance.
1. Describe Your Experience: What happened in the practice, training or game situation?
2. Thoughts and Feelings:
a. What thoughts, emotions, physical feelings affected my performance both positive and negative? (excitement, nervousness, strong focus/lack of focus, anger/frustration)
b. How did my coach, teammates, opponents, equipment affect my performance both positively and negatively? (What was said, how did I respond, was I able to recover)
3. Evaluation: What was good about this performance (training, practice, game)?
4. Analysis (Adjustments): What should I do differently in the future?
5. Conclusion: What did I learn from this experience?
6. Action Plan: Set performance goals for the next soccer session.
Following training, practice or games, a small investment in time (10-15 minute) will help to create awareness within the athlete about what happened, why, what was going on, how it felt, the result it had and adjustments that need to be made. While players may have this information “swimming around” in their heads, the process of writing it down systematically will clarify and confirm the athletic experience. This in turn will allow the athlete to move ahead with the next training or competition more focused.
For example: Susie, a 15-year-old center midfielder, needed help to deal with all the negativity she was experiencing during games. She was tremendously hard on herself when she made a mistake and was known to yell out “Sorry!” to her teammates when she made a mistake.
Susie was introduced to the reflective process, which was used both as a tool for to assess what exactly was going on internally with Susie’s self-talk and as a tool for Susie to become more aware of what was going on. In our work, we began to refer to Susie’s self-talk as the “little voice.” She would speak in the third person about the little voice. “The little voice would not shut up today!”
Her reflections revealed that the little voice was very active and very negative following mistakes. In order to recover from a mistake, Susie felt compelled to do something “right” to make up for it, like get possession back, make a good pass or score a goal. At times it could take several minutes for something “right” to happen. While waiting to redeem herself, Susie would punish herself internally the whole time, playing angrily and erratically, yelling at herself “You know better than that!” “How could you be so stupid?” “I can’t believe the coach hasn’t taken me out yet!”
Susie began to write her complete reflections following each training session and game. She returned the following week and was asked to read what she had written in her reflections. As she read it out loud, her body language shifted and a look of amazement came over her face. She looked up and said, “I sure am wasting a lot of time on my mistakes! All I can think about is that stupid mistake I made!”
It was clear that she was very distracted after she made mistakes. Susie agreed and suggested, “Yeah, I sure am! I really need to get back into the game, even after mistakes!” The important question was, “What should you be thinking about during that time?”
Susie thought and replied, “The game, the ball, my position, communication…whatever my job is at the moment!” Awareness has been achieved!
From this point, Susie was given a plan to include a cue word to get her refocused following mistakes or anytime she found herself focusing on “the little voice” instead of the appropriate task. The reflective process allowed Susie to look at herself more objectively and recognize her own patterns. With this self-awareness she can then move on to making appropriate adjustments to help improve her focus when needed. Susie proceeded to play more consistently, dealing with adversity in game situations better, remaining focused for the whole game and overall became more mentally tough.
Notice that Susie did all of the work herself. She took the time to write up the reflections, she read it out loud and she made all the connections. This was her process. All that was needed of the coach was a list of reflective questions to give your athletes and some accountability to ensure the reflections are completed. Have players keep spiral notebooks in their gear bags and commit 10 minutes at the end of practice for players to reflect on their practice performance. Like other skills, reflecting takes some practice before players are good at it. Encourage players to communicate questions, positive insights or confusion that they may have as a result of reflecting.
This process allows players to be more independent and take more responsibility for their own development as players. It also opens the door for communication between player and coach. (As a coach you also may find that you have players that may require more specialized training from a sport psychology consultant.)
As Susie showed us, the self-awareness that she gained from the reflective practice allowed her to make adjustments to cope better with mistakes and play more consistently focused, confident and resilient. She’s got it. She proved that mental toughness is teachable through self-awareness.
Editor’s note: Erika Carlson specializes in youth sports and is the Sport Psychology Consultant for Bodymax Sports Training in Pleasanton, Calif. She also works extensively with The National Champion Girls Soccer Club Pleasanton Rage providing services for the clubs teams and individual athletes to increase teamwork and performance.
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