What is Mental Toughness, and How Does it Relate to Motivation?
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Mental Toughness is a concept that has been given a lot of attention in sport psychology in the last few years. It tends to be associated with some kind of ability to cope with pressure, or resiliency.
It is something that athletes, coaches and commentators seem to recognise, but something that is harder to pin down.
"Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of mind-you could call it character in action." - Vince Lombardi
Jones et al (2002) attempt a definition of mental toughness, that centres around being, determined resilient, staying in control and remaining focused in the face of pressure. They also listed some characteristics of mentally tough elite athletes, namely:
Self-belief, Motivation, Focus and Composure, or ability to handle pressure.
One of the reasons that mental toughness can be hard to pin down is that is contextual – it can be used to describe someone running an ultra marathon, a golfer on the final round of a major championships, a team that finds an extra level of performance in a “must win” game..
One thing that the mental toughness literature seems to ignore is that some athletes not only cope with the pressure of competition, with the pain of training, but thrive on it. In other words, they enjoy it. This isn’t just about being resilient, about managing something unpleasant, but actually gaining pleasure from tough situations.
How can we understand this aspect of mental toughness better?
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 | Author: | robrobson (robrobson's profile, robrobson's blog) |
 | Posted On: | Sunday, 18th November '07, 5:18pm |
 | Tags: | Psychology |
 | Comments: | 1 comment, go to comments |
Comments
Mental toughness.
Ledge14
Mental toughness is indirectly related to motivation. Self belief is very important that desire to win can give you the edge. In sport you will get knocked back several times. But you must have belief inyour ability, stay focused and get up stronger and keep going to achieve your potnetial. For techniques to improve confidence let me know.