Exploring Mental Toughness in NCAA Athletes

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to explore National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 athletes' perceptions of mental toughness. Specifically, three areas of mental toughness were explored including attributes, the role of significant others, and strategies used to build mental toughness. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 athletes from a variety of sports. Lower and higher-order themes were developed to capture the main ideas of mental toughness. Various psychological attributes emerged including performing under pressure, being motivated, being a hard worker, and anticipation. In addition, all athletes referred to coaches as being critical in developing mental toughness (i.e., coaches' support, coaches' attributes, coaches' practices). Creating a positive but tough practice environment emerged as a dominant theme to build mental toughness. In addition, the themes of teaching mental toughness and enhancing athletes' psychological skills emerged. Findings offer implications for aspiring collegiate athletes and their coaches, as well as current NCAA athletes and coaches.

The development of mental toughness in adolescents: utilising established theories

“…This capacity has been discussed as a collection of personal characteristics including attributes such as self-confidence, optimistic thinking, and psychological resilience, leading to a general consensus that mental toughness is a multidimensional concept (Butt et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2002). In testing this assumption regarding the dimensionality of mental toughness, Gucciardi et al (in press) found that there was considerable empirical overlap among such personal characteristics and that a multidimensional construct was limited in terms of discriminant validity.…”

“…Mental toughness is a term that is often used to describe a collection of psychological characteristics thought to be central to high performance (Butt et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2002). Over the last decade, researchers have expended considerable efforts in attempting to define and conceptualize mental toughness.…”

“…For example, a golfer who sets a short-term goal to chip three consecutive balls onto the practice green and succeeds at the first attempt could be said to be Figure 3. A synthesis of prominent previous conceptualizations of mental toughness (Bull et al, 2005;Butt et al, 2010;Clough et al, 2002;Coulter et al, 2010;Gucciardi et al, 2008;Jones et al, 2002Jones et al, , 2007Thelwell et al, 2005) into notions of striving, surviving, and thriving.…”

“…Despite this conceptual ambiguity, researchers have often defined mental toughness similarly. In light of available empirical (Butt et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2002;Thelwell et al, 2005) and conceptual literature (Gucciardi, Gordon, & Dimmock, 2009a), mental toughness has commonly been defined As mental toughness has been associated with the collective processes that allow individuals to pursue goals with effort and persistence, overcome the challenges of their goal pursuits, and experience positive and adaptive experiences throughout their encounters , I propose that mental toughness can be understood by the personal characteristics that facilitate human striving, surviving, and thriving (I define and elaborate on these concepts in the following section). A synthesis of components reported in past conceptualizations of mental toughness into themes of striving, surviving, and thriving is represented in Figure 3.…”

“…Proximal processes are described as the primary and direct producers of development and are posited within the bioecological model as the most substantive and theoretically significant property that drives development (Bronfenbrenner, 2005;Krebs, 2009b (Butt, Weinberg, & Culp, 2010;Connaughton et al, 2010;Connaughton et al, 2008;Gucciardi, Gordon, Dimmock, et al, 2009;Thelwell et al, 2010).…”