Article- Mental Toughness

Back when I played football in high school coaches would get in my team’s face and scream, “MENTAL TOUGHNESS, we need MENTAL TOUGNESS” as they spit on us with the rotting smell of old coffee. But what really is mental toughness and where does it start? Can we train it and how is it achieved?


The basis of this article is to lay the foundation for what mental toughness really is, where it comes from, and how you can start to apply it to your sport and life. Yet, I can tell you from personal and professional experience, it is not getting yelled at by a grown man on a power trip.

Every person has a perfect intensity level where they perform their best. One person may need to be super pumped up while another may need to be so relaxed its as if they are sleeping. So the first aspect to perform is to be aware enough to know what the perfect arousal place is.

I use the analogy a lot of driving a car - sometimes you step on the pedal (on the highway) and sometimes you creep along (in traffic). But you have to know the situation and your peak performance arousal level in order to perform the best in the task at hand.

For 95% of all the kids I have worked with in baseball the (internal) place they perform the best in is relaxed. Most kids try very hard, swing tight, play with nerves, and never really relax and play the game.

By relaxing and letting the body be loose it allows the skills and natural flow of the game to take over. It puts an athlete in the position to play NOW - playing in the moment and being free, thus putting yourself in the position to be successful.

A simple way to relax is to breathe. You have to breathe anyway, why not make it useful! By taking a deep inhale into the stomach you provide the body the necessary oxygen it needs to relax. By focusing on your breath you also enter the moment, because you can’t breathe in the past or future.

Yet there is another side - what if you are so tired that you feel like you just rolled out of bed, and you need some extra oomph. There is a reason the crazy baseball closer has all the thrill and act to a pump up song, it’s a fake. In the case that an athlete needs to pump themselves up I always recommend the phrase that my Dad used to say “Fake it till you make it”. Acting pumped up and running around can actually trick the mind into feeling good, thus bringing ones energy back to the optimal level. Or put on that baseball closer Hells Bells song and stew in your shoes!

So before any coaches start drinking bad coffee and yelling at kids, think to yourself “does that help?” And for all players, remember that you have to find your level of intensity where you play the best, to fake it till you make it to get pumped up, or breathe and relax to allow the body to perform. Either way, know what intensity level you play best at and try to repeat it, and practice it, because that is the foundation for mental toughness!