Photo: Snapped! by Becca Clark
Mental Toughness for Athletes
Being mentally tough helps you perform well under pressure, remain calm in stressful or difficult situations and helps you bounce back from challenges or obstacles that you come across – and we know there will definitely be some in cheerleading!
Mental toughness can be developed through practice, by exposing yourself to challenging and difficult situations. Athletes who are mentally tough are going to be better able to handle problems or difficult situations that come up without losing their confidence or motivation. Athletes who are weaker mentally will be the ones that become unmotivated or completely lose their confidence if something difficult happens – for example, if you have an extremely tough coach that criticizes you a lot, or your stunt isn’t hitting as a flyer and you end up getting grounded.
In these situations, someone who’s mentally tough will be able to put that at the back of their mind and get back to focusing on what’s important, which is their training. They won’t dwell on it, sulk or have bad attitude at practice. The mentally weak athletes will have a harder time not letting their emotions impact their training and self-esteem.
The 4 Cs
So, how can you develop more resilience and mental toughness? Think of the 4 C’s: control, commitment, challenge and confidence.
Control
This is your self-esteem. It’s how much you feel like you’re in control of your life and that you can make a difference or change your circumstances on your own. People who have good control are comfortable with themselves. They can control their emotions, handle their anxieties/nervousness and are not likely to get too influenced by other people’s emotions.
If you’re low on the scale for control, you’re going to feel like everything is due to external factors and there’s nothing that you can do to change anything. You basically put no blame on yourself or do not hold yourself accountable for things that happen in your life. Obviously not every single situation is under our own control, but we can learn to regulate our reactions and outlook on certain situations or events. You can probably never 100% control a situation, but you can always control how you think and react to it.
Commitment
The 2nd C is commitment, which is your ability to stay focused, set goals and consistently work towards or achieve them without being distracted. The athletes who have a set routine and particular habits that they do every single day are going to be the ones that are a bit more mentally tough. This is because they’ve figured out how to force themselves to take consistent action to reach their goals.
We all know how hard it is to set a goal and work towards it without ever getting off track once! The trick with commitment is to actually commit and stay committed until the end goal has been reached. My advice for this is to set goals that are way smaller than you think you can achieve. This almost sounds counterproductive, but because we tend to get excited and super motivated when we’re setting goals, we’ll sometimes set them bigger than we need to. All our excitement at the time makes it seem realistic and achievable.
It’s fine to have a huge end goal, but if your end goal is super big then you need to break it down into smaller goals that are easier to achieve along the way. Let’s say you want to work out 7 days a week and cut out all junk food. This is most likely not attainable for anyone right off the bat. So, if that’s your end goal that eventually you want to get to, start with saying you’re going to work out 3 days a week, even if it’s just for 15 minutes, and then eat 1 healthier meal a day that includes whatever fruits, vegetables, etc. you want to eat. Once you get into the habit of achieving those small goals each week, you can bump it up slowly until you’re where you want to be.
Challenge
The 3rd C of mental toughness is Challenge. This describes a way of thinking that means you see any challenges or adversity as opportunities instead of threats. A lot of people see challenge and change as something to avoid and be fearful of. If you’re very mentally tough, you’re going to treat those situations like they’re a stepping stone to getting you where you want to be, not as a setback. With each obstacle that you overcome, you become more adaptable and gain confidence in yourself that you can handle anything difficult or uncomfortable that comes your way.
Confidence
Challenge leads us into the 4th C, which is confidence. We all know what this means – it’s our level of belief in ourselves that we can perform as we wish and do the things that we want. If you have high confidence, you’re going to be more willing to take on new tasks and put yourself in situations that make you feel out of your comfort zone a little. Athletes with low confidence are going to always stay in their comfort zone and won’t feel as if they can get past their hesitancy of self-doubts.
Your confidence level is also displayed when you face setbacks. If you have an injury or lose your spot on a team, confident athletes are going to strongly feel that they’ll get back to where they were or even better. Non-confident athletes are going to accept that that’s their reality and there’s no need to bother trying to work for what they want because they don’t feel like they have it in them to achieve it.
How to Apply the 4 Cs
All in all, if you want to become a better cheerleader, tumbler, get more flexible, whatever it is… you need to try to:
1. Switch your thinking into that of having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset.
2. Recognize that you are in control of your life and although you may not have total control over all circumstances, you can control how you react and the actions that you take to make the best out of anything.
3. Work on your commitment to yourself and your goals – learn how to set achievable goals and develop consistency with working on them.
4. Start looking at challenges as opportunities to improve yourself.
5. Start ramping up your confidence. You can do this by faking it until you actually feel it, saying affirmations for confidence or making a list of all the things you’ve achieved and things you’ve overcome that’ll help you feel like you can take on other new challenges.
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