Leadman Prep: Mental Toughness
Developing mental toughness is often made out to be an heroic, some times egocentric task that is glorified by the media as people try to one up their ‘mental toughness’ game. Podcasts are made solely on the subject, hundreds of books and articles are written on it and every Tom, Dick and Sally will let you know that they can give you the secret to toughness (for a buck). And lord the Instragram posts…
With this often comes a dark side. If our minds get hooked or ‘fused’ on the idea that we don’t have the ‘toughness’ to excel, ie. we don’t have the healthy self-belief/self-worth that I am tough enough, we can either overcompensate by doing completely unnecessary things that may lead us to injury (or death) or we actually develop performance anxiety and even depression as a result of chasing toughness - just the opposite affect what we’re trying to do.
For mental toughness to work we need a healthy self-esteem - how you think and feel about yourself; and self-efficacy - the belief in our ability to perform or complete a specific task.
When our self-esteem is wrapped up into our performance it makes it darn hard to be mentally tough. Errors/failures will affect us at our core and we can act in fear of failure as opposed to with a mindset of mastery.
In the same vane people fall prey to posting activities on social media that they believe demonstrates ‘mental toughness’ in an attempt to build their self-esteem through ‘kudos’ and ‘likes.’ This may feed the ego and give a temporary bit of satisfaction but not necessarily give the individual the tools needed to succeed.
As I write this and try to articulate how this relates to Leadman I don’t want to portray even for a moment that that I am going to do some news worthy feat to develop the toughness. What I am doing is practicing the mental skills of awareness, opening up and engaging in progressively more challenging situations as they apply to my values and goals.
Here’s the deal. I am human, like you, developing this is hard. My mind just like yours tells me to sleep in. My mind tells me this hurts. My mind tells me that ‘just another plate of pasta’ will fuel me and the second homemade cinnamon roll will be very tasty.
In fact I will garner that even the people you believe are the toughest of the toughest have minds that work like that.
The one caveat that people who have high levels of mental toughness will tell you is that while they have thoughts like that too, they know they have a choice and redirect their focus to the actions that matter and are fully engaged in the process.
Researchers looking at mental toughness typically measure constancy, confidence and control.
Constancy - “I am committed to completing the tasks I have to do” or “I take responsibility for setting myself challenging targets”
Confidence - “I interpret potential threats as positive opportunities” or “I have qualities that set me apart from other competitors”
Control - “I get anxious by events I did not expect or cannot control”
Just how do we develop these areas if our minds chatting away. Sometimes sharing helpful information, and sometimes not…
The Bus Driver
Much like a bus driver that has unruly passengers climb aboard ever single day you have a choice.
If you engage and argue with them then who’s driving the bus?
If you listen to them then you’re not getting to your destination.
Of course sometimes you might want to if they’re telling you about something that’s happening to your bus: “you have a flat tire" “There’s smoke coming out the back.” Warning signs of sharp pain, more than the ‘normal’ niggle are indicators that you want to address. I think of so many people that will run on a broken foot in true belief that they are building toughness, for war that may be necessary, for longevity in your sport, not really a good idea, unless you know that this is a make or break scenario (I’m thinking the 200,000$ purse for first place or an olympic gold - those are really judgement calls - for most of us who want to run again, it may not be worth the risk/reward...) Think about this in terms of values. Am I looking to stoke the ego? Or is this going leading me towards a core value?
For me, I am the driver of this bus, my bus. If I want to drive in the direction of ‘adventure,' ‘fitness’ and towards the goal of Leadman Finisher - I can’t let the passengers on the bus make the decisions. I have to do hard things- uncomfortable things that in the end are going to lead me towards these goals and be fully engaged in my process.
The passengers come on the bus in all shapes and sizes.
There’s the “You can sleep just another five minutes,”
“You might re-injure your achilles” passenger.
“I suck at this” passenger.
“You don’t have to go this fast” passenger
“You don’t have to go this slow passenger… this won’t look good on Strava.”
The thing is the passengers are going to be there no matter what. You can try realllllly hard to ignore them but I bet they’ll get louder. You can gently acknowledge them as they get on and then REFOCUS and ENGAGE in your process moving towards your destination. Often times the passengers just quiet down like background music. You control your arms, legs, eyes - and mouth, not the passengers.
Let’s take for example the VO2max workout I did the other day 10x90-seconds at a perceived exertion of 10 for each run interval. The passenger’s on this bus were screaming at me after the second interval: “that was too hard, slow down, you’ll rip your hamstring, you’ll pass out.”
I have a choice now. I can listen to those passengers and slow down. Stop the intervals. Or I can direct my focus on making my legs move faster - which I did…and the funny thing is…the passengers were still there, but they quieted down, they didn’t distract me and I got the job done. In fact in the process of refocusing I started using positive self-talk, telling myself: ‘faster,’ ‘stronger.’ Which helped. I also noticed the wind on my face and my foot steps on the ground, I got outside of the screams inside and focused entirely on MOVING and ENGAGING in the process.
Here are just a few ideas that I am working on to build mental toughness that may help you as well:
Progressively challenge yourself. BE SPECIFIC TO YOUR GOAL. (to often I see really contrived things like sitting in ice water- great if I want to swim around Antarctica, not so helpful if I’m running in Death Valley. Think in terms of enhancing self-efficacy - you need to build upon the specific skill - not a random toughness experiment. An example being I have high confidence in my running abilities but there is little transference to my mountain biking abilities- that would be awesome, but to build that confidence I need to be MOUNTAIN BIKING.) Now you may be able to practice accepting the discomfort in thew ice water- but I’d rather be spending my time accepting the discomfort in the things that I am working on whether they be a insane long ride, running in the snow and rain, running fast on tired legs, a hard tempo run, a mountain bike ride just above my ability...
Be Aware and Be Present. Come back to the moment. What do you see, hear, feel, smell right now? Use all of your senses.
Be Open and ACCEPTING to uncomfortable thoughts feelings, sensations and emotions recognize them if they say hi - you don’t have to engage in them AND don’t try to fight them, cause if you’re fighting them then you are not ENGAGED in the task at hand.
Fully Engage in your valued action. Immerse yourself in the process (there is a connection to the idea of FLOW here but that’s for another post.)
Finally - be compassionate with your passengers, be compassionate with yourself recognize that building these skills takes time, it takes work, we all come with history, but we do have a choice in moving towards our goals and values each day.. You will have good days and you’ll have bad days but keep moving forward!
Resources:
The Confidence Gap: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt, by Russ Harris
ACT in Sport: Improve Performance through Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Commitment, by James Hegarty and Christoph Huelsmann