Coach to Coach: The Mental Fundamentals

The yellow flag is thrown and the coach’s voice is rising. It’s obviously a bad call. Everyone can smell the home cooking. “That score would have put us on top and now it’s called back. The ref has literally taken points away from us.” The coach is livid and walking the tightrope to ejection. The lack of composure is reflected in the players when the clock dwindles and the cheap shots fly. This game will be lost in more ways than one.

Building mental toughness starts with the coach. In coaching, one common thread is universally agreed upon, “The game is mostly mental”. We hear coaches address the importance of being “mentally tough” in nearly every practice and competition. But questions arise. What is mental toughness? What are mental skills? How do we use mental skills to develop mental toughness? In the next several articles, I will be covering the fundamentals of the mental game including six topics that can help you provide the mental skills foundation that you can learn and teach to your players.
Topics will include:

•  Building confidence

•  Goal setting

•  Motor programming

•  Attention control and concentration

•  Relaxation and energizing

•  Imagery and visualization

Let’s get started by defining mental toughness. Once we’ve got that established, we’ll move on to creating the proper environment for building confidence.

Defining Mental Toughness

When I grew up playing football, “mental toughness” meant playing with a concussion, a broken finger or just being able to take the coaches’ spit in your face. Nowadays, we have realized that building mental toughness only happens through the learning and practice of particular mental skills. In fact, no scientific study in the field of sport and performance psychology suggests that mental toughness comes from injury or putting up with an abusive coach.

Instead, “mental toughness” is the ability to get knocked down and get back up; that is, returning better, smarter and stronger. Simply put, mental toughness is the unquenchable thirst for improvement and the ability to do what it takes to achieve that improvement. For mentally tough athletes, the setbacks are irrelevant. They strive to improve regardless of the obstacles. For those teams and athletes that win consistently, mental toughness is the ability to sustain greatness by constantly polishing their skills to improve. Improvement is the nucleus of every great football coaching philosophy. Mental toughness is the willingness to try something so challenging that failure is possible. Through failure we improve. Sometimes I think we should actually reach for failure because then you know your dreams are big enough.

So what type of place will foster mentally tough athletes? Is it a place where the athlete endures and performs in spite of constant ridicule and criticism, or a place that builds the athlete from the inside out through modeling and teaching mental skills? Coaches have the power to provide either place they choose. What kind of environment will you choose?

Building Confidence

The kids get there early on Saturday. They take their seats and get ready for the coaches to evaluate their game performance. They hate film day especially after a loss because all they hear about is their mistakes. Play by play, it’s as if they did nothing right. Missed tackles, missed blocks, the criticisms are neverending. Sure, there are a few attaboys thrown around but the atmosphere is dominated by the sour taste of losing. This is the road to ruin.

It is the road that runs in the opposite direction of building confidence. It takes extreme mental toughness to fight the natural reflex of criticism. As coaches, we want to dedicate most of our efforts into building confidence through optimism, encouragement and instruction. When we do that, the occasional blow up or criticism can be absorbed by the player and used as motivational fuel rather than de-motivational fear.

For Coaches:

•  Being enthusiastic. Have and show intense and eager enjoyment, interest or approval.

•  Using the positive sandwich. Utilizing technical instruction, tell players what they did well, followed by correction and then encourage them to improve.

•  Promote healthy self-talk. Guide them into saying effective things in their minds.

•  Cancel a negative with a positive. Look at the bright side; it’s a learning experience.

•  Always give instruction. Remember, the ultimate goal is improvement.

•  Be fully prepared for game day. Players win, coaches lose. Mistakes are inevitable. And you will never get a referee to pick up a flag by yelling at him.

•  Focus solely on what you CAN DO. You can get better. You can lift your team. You can teach.

•  Evaluate disappointments. Look for life lessons, teaching moments. Resilience breeds mental toughness.

•  Create the habit of daily success. Even if your team is losing games, they can achieve practice goals.

For Players:
 
•  Remembering past successes. Dwell on great performances from practice and games and believe that you can and will repeat them.

•  Being an optimist. Take responsibility for success and believe in yourself and your team.

•  Protect your confidence. Owning triumph and create an inner dialog that helps you understand what is out of your control.

•  Be your own greatest advocate. Give yourself the same advice you would give your very best friend.

•  Healthy self-talk. Become aware of what you are saying to yourself and force your inner dialog into a positive direction.

•  Embrace tough challenges. Practice with an attitude of improvement and push yourself to master new tasks. Relish the opportunity to play against tough competition.

•  Create a motto. Make up a personal saying or verbal slogan that keeps you focused.

•  Create practice goals. Set achievable goals for practice and then perform them.

•  Believe in the coaches. Your coach has a plan, put your whole heart into that plan.

There are many more things that will influence confidence, but the above list is a great place to start. These are things that coaches and players can start doing now. One of the most powerful suggestions on the list is goal setting. Setting practice goals will serve as a starting point to achieve little victories. This is especially needed for teams that are rebuilding or struggling to get winning seasons. If your team is already a perennial contender, than goal setting has probably been implemented by the coach. In my next article, I will go into detail about goal setting. I will break down exactly how to set goals and give coaches ideas to help kids create their own goals. Teenage boys have a difficult time setting proper goals so I’m going to share some ideas that will make it easier.

Great coaches love their players. Building confidence really comes from that love. Deliver with love and you will create a great place for your kids, a place they can believe in.
 
About the Author: Tim Mitchell is a sports psychology consultant and a former Navy deep sea diver. He
has also been coaching both youth and high school football for over 20 years. Mitchell is currently on the staff of Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins (CO) and can be reached at coachtimmitchell@gmail.com.