AS this column endeavours to provide critical ingredients for our athletes to rise to the occasion  during the 2015 sporting calendar, this week’s edition brings yet another topic of great importance that can spur medals if embraced.
Common sense tells us that top competitive athletes make their mark on account of their physical talents and their dedication to training. However, they also succeed because of their nimbleness in dealing with the psychological pressures of a sport.
It is all down to mental toughness and resilience which are tremendously important for any athlete aiming to be the best in sport.
Many questions can be asked about the level of mental strength of our athletes competing at various local and international competitions. Are they mentally tough enough to compete?
To be champion in sports, one has to embrace certain qualities that make champions out of ordinary players in a game.
How do the champions get the high levels of expertise? What exactly makes the difference when it comes to winning a game or being number one? How do they cope with the pressure? Is it more painful to get to the top or to stay there? All these questions are answered in the ‘Fighting Spirit’.
Best athletes have an impression about them that can sometimes be difficult to describe. It is something within them – a fighting spirit. Somehow, one can just tell they have got what it takes to be the best and it is not always about monster strength.
Most sports personalities I have known so far have a one track mind. They eat, sleep and drink sports. They are keen to learn, to master their trade and it is this drive and ambition that spurs them on.
And to be the best, an athlete need to be prepared to give their whole life over to the sport and always bear in mind that while the desire to succeed is great – so too are the rewards when one reaches the pinnacle in a particular discipline.
Complexity and turbulence in the world of sports are here to stay but they present opportunities as well as challenges for players.
With the increasing competitiveness of various sports that have seen athletes jostle for the top slot, pressure on individual athletes doesn’t always wane and so does on the rest of the players in the competition, but still, one has to say “Bring it on!”
As a result, many athletes world over engage in training their psychological readiness to compete at various levels.
It is not simply a matter of our athletes’ knowledge, ability and skill in soccer, tennis, Judo or Badminton but it is also their psychological preparedness for the challenge in a sport, including the skill in dealing with the stress that comes with stiff competition.
Athletes should be able to possess the mental toughness to recover from mistakes and failure quickly and determine the strategies to tackle tough situations during competitions.
Using research and literature by world’s renowned sports psychologist James Loehr’s book titled ‘The New Toughness Training for Sports’, I thought it could be useful to share the six elements of Mental Toughness with the sports fraternity.
The American performance guru outlines that there are at least six markers of mental toughness from sports psychology that are stated as follows:
1. Flexibility: Sportsmen and women have the ability to absorb the unexpected. If the unexpected occurs or things don’t go as expected, the athlete remains flexible in their approach and look for new ways to solve the problem.
Flexibility entails that athletes must continually be open to re-educating themselves, even in the basics, which they may have taken for granted for too long.
2. Responsiveness: Athletes are able to remain engaged, alive and connected with a situation when under pressure. They must constantly be identifying the opportunities, challenges, and threats in the sporting environment of competition.  .
Just as a coach may change strategies at halftime in response to the way a game is going based on the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, game-ready athletes must respond to changes in the game.
3. Strength: This quality entails that athletes should be able to exert and resist great force when under pressure and to keep going against insurmountable odds. They should find the strength to dig deep and garner the resolve to keep going, even when in a seemingly losing game.
Maintaining focus on giving their best and fighting hard until the end, with persistent intensity throughout the game, should be imperative.
Determined athletes dig deep to find the physical and psychological strength to continue through adverse and tough situations. As Loehr puts it, top athletes think, “While this is tough, I am a whole lot tougher.” The athletes should bring the same intensity, through all the continual pounding.
4. Courage and ethics: Teamwork is integral when competing in team events. Therefore athletes must shrug off the temptation to cut corners or to undermine others so that they can come out on top.
They should have the courage to make the hard but right decisions for the team.
5. Resilience: Athletes should be able to rebound from disappointments, mistakes and missed opportunities and get right back in the game. They should possess a hardiness for enduring the downs of a situation while remaining optimistic in the face of adversity and quickly change when necessary.
Once this is adhered to, athletes make things better and become experts at figuring out ways to do more with fewer resources.
6. Sportsmanship: This demands athletes to show sportsmanship. They should not let the opponent know when he or she has gotten them down.  Clearly we all experience disappointment, attacks from others, an occasional blow to the stomach. However, the behavior exhibited by athletes after losing or being attacked by others sets the tone for the rest of the team.
Additionally, top athletes support their teammates and their roles. If teammates start competing or attacking one another, it is definitely difficult to win.
To sum up, all athletes need these same indicators of toughness to succeed and lead in today’s sporting world.
Loehr’s elements of mental toughness are simply teaching us that we cannot succeed on technical skill alone, we need psychological preparedness.
To the athletes, I would say go into competitions with the attitude of “Bring it on!” After all, who wouldn’t love to go head to head with top class opponents in game?
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