Mental Strength For Tactical Athletes – How to Develop It

If you’re new to my blog you probably have noticed that I talked a lot about mental strength and not mental toughness.  I’m sure by now you’re wondering, what the difference between mental strength and mental toughness is, right?

You’re probably also curious how to develop mental strength, specifically for operational and tactical athletes as well as the combat athlete?

Mental strength is an interesting concept and requires a different perspective from mental toughness to appreciate.

Just like mental toughness, mental strength can mean many things to many people, it all depends the situation.

To being with, let’s take a closer look at the words ‘toughens’ and ‘strength.’ According to Dictionary.com here are a few definitions.

Tough/Toughness:

• Hard to bear
• Endure
• Difficult to perform, accomplish, or deal with
• Hardened

Strength:

• The quality or state of being strong
• Mental power
• Force
• Vigor
• The capability to exert power

Stop for a moment and get a sense what these definitions mean and do to you…what are the feelings and thoughts that come to you?

Doesn’t one of then sound burdensome and the other more empowering?

If you’re like me, I get a sense that toughness is more like “putting up with” and strength is more self-empowering and self-control.

Also, notice that the key part of the definition for ‘strength’ is the word ‘power’. To add to our understanding of what mental strength is, let’s look at the definition of the word ‘power’.

Again, according to dictionary.com defines power as ‘the ability to cause things to happen‘. We can now define strength as ‘the capability to  cause things to happen’.

For any type of strength to develop there always has to be resistance and this resistance has to be overcome. The key here is that the resistance has to be overcome. With toughness, the resistance doesn’t necessarily have to be overcome, just endured or tolerated.

Unfortunately, when a person does meet with resistance in their life as part and their training, they use toughens as their default.

Unfortunately, they don’t become stronger the next time they meet resistance, they become “hardened” and insensitive.

Think about a callous. It developed but the skin getting tough to the resistance. Pretty soon you can’t even feel that area any more, and worse yet, the callous begins to cause pain.

Becoming tough ultimately leads to more pain!

Becoming strong leads to power!

So, we can say that mental strength is the ability to overcome mental resistance and consciously cause things to happen. The ‘things’ are worthwhile objective or goals that you consciously decide upon, are decided for you by your commander or are based on your core values.

Mental strength is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to:

• Generally cope better than others with the many demands (i.e., practice, training, engagement, and lifestyle) that are placed on you as a tactical athlete.

• Specifically, to be more consistent and better than others in remaining determined, focused, confident, resilient, and in control under pressure

Key psychological characteristics associated with mentally strong individuals (Jones et al – 2002):

• Self-Belief:
• Having an unshakable belief in your ability to achieve your objectives or  goals
• Unique qualities that make you better than your ‘opponents.’

• Motivation:
• Having an insatiable desire and internalized motivation to succeed (you really got to want it)
• Ability to bounce back from performance setbacks with increased determination to succeed.

• Focus:
• Remain fully focused on the task at hand in the face of specific distractions
• Able to switch focus on and off as required
• Not being adversely affected by others on your team or your own internal distractions (worry, negative mind chatter)

• Composure/Handling Pressure:
• Able to regain psychological control following unexpected events or distractions
• Thriving on the pressure of competition (embracing pressure, stepping into the moment)
• Accept that anxiety is inevitable in competition and know you can cope with it

The key component of mental strength is learning how to condition your mind to think confidently and be able to overcome frustration/self-critical negativity and reframe self-talk into what it is you want to occur.

How to Develop Mental Strength for Tactical Athletes:

1 – Starts with the Right Attitude and State Of Mind:

• Know what your core confidence is all about

• Confidence comes in knowing you’re prepared and having an unshakable belief in your abilities to reach intended objectives (goals)

• Also linked to mentality of being a “Competitive Warrior”

• Jerry Lynch (2002): “Confidence is about who puts it on the line, who has the courage to compete like a warrior without fear of failure”

• Courage to leave it all out on “the field”, engage with heart, determination, and full focus

2 – Program Your Mind for Success:

• During practice, off duty, anytime…program your mind by repeating positive affirmations and expectations

• Expect the best from yourself

• Affirm what it is you are going to do to be successful

• Confident goal oriented statements starting with “I will, I can, I am going to…”

• Focus on those things you want to occur, rather than things you’re afraid might go wrong

• Script Success

• Visualize yourself performing the way you want, i.e. confident, strong, energized, full focus

3 – Ritualize Your Behaviors:

• Develop a systematic pre-engagement routine that clicks on desired mental-emotional state of mind, i.e. ferocious resolve, resilience, power, persistence, precession

• Purposeful Practice.  Once you walk through the doors, you commit yourself to giving it everything you have the entire practice – this includes making a commitment to listening, learning, executing skills/drills with precision and full focus

• Pre-engagement routine. Develop a systematic routine for engineering the environment and getting yourself ready

• During Engagement: Once you walk on to the scene, you’re committing yourself to being mentally strong and to be a  committed, resolved and trusted team member throughout the entire event

4 – Poise and Composure:

• Learn how to let go of mistakes quickly if things do not go the way you want

• Key part of mental strength training is about compensating, adjusting, and trusting

• If plan A does not work, go to plan B or C

• Use of “Focal Points” are effective to help focus attention back onto task at hand

• Be persistent and mentally strong, don’t allow frustration to undermine your confidence/focus

5 – Take Control of Negative Self-Talk:

• Reframe “stinking thinking” into positive task oriented suggestions.

• Starts with awareness of situations that cause you to get frustrated, rushed, intimidated, lose focus – then reframe the negativity into positive, mentally strong self-suggestions:

• Instead of:
• “I can’t hit this shot if my life depended on it”, let go, reframe it back into something more positive and task oriented “get a good look at the target, see it, feel it, trust it”

• “I can’t get my hands working today”, reframe it, step away, breathe, refocus, visualize the feel of good release and say to yourself “this one is going to hit the mark”

6 – There is no Failure, Only Feedback

• Use undesirable outcomes as a stepping stone for future achievement.

• Champions approach to overcoming adversity: Play to win as opposed to playing not to lose

• Focus on your process, your specific skills and task and doing them well, the outcome will take care of itself

7 – Be the Difference Maker

• Step up and have a peak performance when it matters the most

OK, I hope this cleared up the difference between mental strength and mental toughness and how to develop mental strength for the operational and tactical athlete as well as the combat athlete.

Self-Reflection – Preparing for Future Events:

• In the foreseeable future, what things are likely to affect your confidence and self-belief?

• What will you do about it?

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.