Mental toughness has been shown to have relevance in a wide range of performancerelated fields where distractions, anxiety, and fear are common challenges; however, there remains a dearth of research in the military where the construct has obvious utility. A quasi-experimental trial with treatment (n ϭ 83) and control (n ϭ 90) conditions examined the impact of a psychological skills intervention on observer-rated mental toughness and performance in an elite military context. The results revealed significant differences in the treatment group between pre-and postintervention in the use of psychological skills and observer-rated mental toughness. Furthermore, during the selection course, significant differences were evidenced between the treatment and control groups in the use of relaxation and imagery and individual performance.
We examined the indirect effects of basic psychological skills (PS) on military endurance through enhanced advanced PS, whilst controlling for fitness. British Army recruits (n = 159) participated in three endurance events for Parachute Regiment selection and completed an adapted Test of Performance Strategies questionnaire (Hardy etal., 2010). Following confirmatory factor analyses, the multiple mediation regression analyses using PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) suggested that goal-setting, imagery and relaxation all had positive indirect effects on endurance via activation, with goal setting also impacting on endurance via negative thinking. These data provide some support for basic PS influencing endurance via advanced PS
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