Mental Toughness Essay

Sport’s are an aspect of life that affect societies across the globe. Athletics affect everyone's life, whether that be playing the sport, watching games, or hearing about a sporting event. There is a big difference between playing an individual sport and players relying on their own athletic abilities versus a team sport when members of the team rely on their teammates to complete each individual's specific responsibility to reach the team's goal. Team sports bring people together in countless ways, and they teach many life skills for the athletes that participate in them. Some of these skills include communication, teamwork, discipline, work ethic, dedication, leadership, and numerous more that will help them in their personal and work

A popular saying around every gym, field, track, and weight room is that it, no matter what activity “it” is that a sportsman is participating in, is ten percent physical and ninety percent mental. For the kids who hear this daily, it is nothing more than a hollow statement a coach says to make them feel better about being physically subordinate to their opponents. I have heard this mantra throughout my life on the baseball field, football field, track, gymnasium, in the weight room, and on the wrestling mat. Just like those poor aforementioned kids being yelled at by their coach, this statement just bounced off me, never finding a sticking place among all my doubt and insecurity. Nowhere was this more true that on the wrestling mat; Coach Jaimez has told my teammates and I this countless times, and not once throughout my first four years of wrestling did this ever sink in. I am ashamed of this, as those athletes in the know, whether they be in High School or draped in their nation’s flag competing for a gold medal, know that this statement could not be more true for the sport of wrestling. Wrestling is a mental sport that is determined by a competitor’s decision to focus on himself rather than his opponent and the competitor’s confidence in himself and his potential to succeed.

Mental strength and agility is just as important as physical prowess in sports. In the debate over the importance of physical prowess and mental agility in sports, Sanneh and Heinrich have similar views, with Sanneh supporting the idea that the ability to think while playing football is just as important as running in “What Could Be Better Than A Touchdown”, and Heinrich suggests that the ability to think while or before running a “race” is just as important as their physical strength and endurance.

Walking onto the field, Person A complains about all the condition coach makes them do, and complains about how long practices are. This is a person who doesn't want to work hard and doesn't have the right mindset to compete with the best athletes. Person B, walks onto the field with a Great attitude and thinks that practices should be longer, and puts in the right amount of work to be better than the guy next to him. You might be thinking, “ Ones just a better teammate, the other one is just looking out for themselves.” But what is the difference between them? Here is the answer; Mental toughness.

Cognitive psychology is linked to sports, insofar, it allows an athlete to recognize subjective experiences that give rise to an optimal mindset, allowing one to perform mentally. Clinical sport psychologists who incorporate this theoretical framework, also believe athletes have the tendency to create maladaptive attitudes, resulting in distorted or exaggerated thoughts (Beck, Freeman, & Davis, 2004; Beck & Haigh, 2014; Keefe, Webb & DeRubeis, 2016), thus, debilitating one’s athletic achievement. For this reason, an athlete’s ability to think, rationalize or anticipate events (i.e., games or practice) affects the way they view their personal experiences. In the same way those experiences are interpreted, is likely how they can be misinterpreted,

Ievleva and Terry (2008) highlighted and elaborated upon points of intersection and divergence between the psychology of peak performance in the worlds of sport and business. They presented Orlick’s (2008) Wheel of Excellence as a vehicle for illustrating how a performance psychology model might be transferred from the sport world and applied to the business world.

Those within the sports world who have high levels of mental toughness are more likely to be more successful competitively than those of a lower scale.

Your Guide to sport psychology-Every weekend professional soccer players play in front of 60,000 and many more watching on TV. Yet, they stay focused and confident thorough there 90-minute battle. It fascinated me that how these players are able to do this consistently without many hiccups. The Idea that simple techniques applied by sport psychologists could make such a big difference in an athlete’s performance is what I find out during my non-fiction journey.

Mental toughness is not a new concept in sport, but is generally misunderstood. Coaches design programmes to develop mentally tough athletes, predominately in professional sport, to separate elite performers from good performers (Gould, Jackson, & Finch, 1993) as physical talent itself is not the only component that can lead an athlete to success (Gucciardi, Gordon, & Dimmock, 2008).

Top level sport is characterized by a demand to excel at optimal levels while performing under conditions that are considered extremely demanding. The pursuit for performance excellence in sport encompasses the continuing development of four key facets of performance, namely physical, technical, tactical, and mental skills. However, when physical, technical, and tactical skills are evenly matched, which commonly occurs in competition especially at the highest level , performers who possess more of what is commonly referred to as ‘‘mental toughness’’ appear to prevail more often than those with less mental toughness (Gucciardi, Gordon, & Dimmock, 2008). Psychological attributes such as self-confidence and

The article, Predicting athletic performance using the five factor model of personality by Ralph L. Piedmont, David C. Hill, Susana Blanco seeks to address how the five factor model of personality when utilized, is a suitable predictor of athletic performance and how it is can assist in gaining an insight and understanding of the competitive nature within athletes, to show if there was a correlation between personality traits within different competitive sport. There have been many other studies used to evaluate personality within sport such as Cooper’s study (1969) that concluded that those that are more athletic in a competition sense are inclined to be socially confidence, aggressive and have an increased motivation to achieve. (Piedmont, R., Hill, D., & Blanco, S. 769-777, 1997). Therefore the authors aim was to utlise several testing method to gain a greater insight to there questions and compliment other studies findings or determine different things.

The intellect of an athlete as well as how much an athlete values intellect is of comparable importance to their overall athleticism. It

The article “What Is This Thing Called Mental Toughness? An Investigation of Elite Sport Performers,” I founded this article on google scholar. This article is about mental toughness. Researchers look on two things: definition of mental toughness and how can

Sports play an important role in our life as it keeps us healthy and active. We can have a healthy mind only when we have a healthy body. Great achievements come our way when we maintain our physical and mental well-being. Sports in other terms can be described as a social link to many personalities in the sporting environment. It helps to bring people from different parts of the world together and acts as a platform for a relationship. Also, It has helped the researchers to have an understanding of the behaviors and reactions of different types of athletes. There are some of the athletes that compete to be able to beat their opponents in the field while others engage themselves to achieve specific goals. This is a clear indication that all participants in any sporting activity participate in meeting specified and different achievements best known to them.

This finding has important implications for developing and identifying mental toughness components among Malaysian footballers. Two hundred and thirty-eight raw data were extract from twelve respondent involved in this study, and further been categorized into 15 second data theme and eight main themes. The results of this study indicate eight main themes of mental toughness profile from the respondent which include 1) motivation 2) negative energy control 3) self-confident 4) positive energy control 5) imagery 6) patriotism 7) religiosity 8) Focus. These findings further support that the first component identified is motivation. Motivation component contribute 21.9 %, the highest mental toughness main theme among recent Malaysian football players. Intrinsic motivation includes self-motivation and individual spirit. As mentioned in the literature review, the themes were excluded from the interview as respondent One responded: “if we observe our ex player, they are highly motivated playing for their country, Malaysia, and if they played at this condition, normally their mental already have the perception that they will win the game.” The second component identified is Negative energy and it contributes 19.2%, and most respondent refers stress and pressure as part of negative energy. The statement can be clearly identified from respondent 2 and 4. “To me mental stress err...the ability to control pressure, it is done consciously, and this is my understanding about mental