Can athletes develop a level of mental toughness that actually becomes a hindrance, rather than an asset? Is there a threshold to where an athlete’s mental strength moves beyond being facilitative toward athletic success, and instead prohibits an injured athlete from coming out of a game, or taking the time needed to recovery from an injury? Surprisingly, the answer in some cases is yes.
Sports can be tough, and athletes often pride themselves on fighting through pain and giving it everything they have on the field (“No pain, no gain!”). In best-case scenarios, these are the types of stories you see in Disney movies, where an athlete clearly banged up and hurt continues to play through pain until the very end. Sometimes the movie story-line ends with the injured athlete being a hero, but in many other real-life examples being headstrong can lead to unnecessary pain, further injury, and even long-term cognitive/physical damage.
A practical example
Arguably the most discussed health risk in contact sports today are concussions. These days, leagues from the NFL down to youth football are emphasizing to error on the conservative side when dealing with potential concussions. Coaches and medical personnel are trained and instructed to immediately remove the athlete from the game and follow specific protocols to assess the magnitude of the head injury. While this is a vastly improved means of addressing head injuries when compared to the past, a certain degree of the current assessment relies on the honesty of the athlete when questioned about his or her symptoms, and herein lies the problem: What do you do when an athlete’s “mental toughness” prevents him or her from being honest when it is known that the athlete will be taken out of the game if injured? Without the athlete being honest, the chances for long-term damage to occur increases dramatically.
The culture also needs to change
We rarely make decisions in life without the circumstances around us having an impact. In sports, there are many additional variables that contribute to an athlete ascribing to an unhealthy level of mental toughness. Some of these conditions include being perceived as a weak team member, letting the team down if having to be removed from the game, and possibly losing a starting position and/or a future college athletic scholarship. Athletes need to be candid and honest when dealing with serious injury, but the culture needs to change, too.
Tips to help
- Talk openly about policies, prioritize health. If you are a coach make sure your players (and parents) know that long-term health is far more valuable compared to stretching out a kid in a game where there’s clearly a potentially dangerous situation developing.
- Use positive reinforcement when kids are honest about injuries. Remember, it’s not always easy for athletes to acknowledge when they are hurt, and even fewer will speak directly to a coach about the need to be removed form the game because of an injury.
- Don’t take playing time away because of injury. In the old days, athletes would never lose their starting position because of an injury, but many coaches in recent years have moved away from this philosophy. One unfortunate result of this changing attitude by coaches are the number of kids who refuse to let coaches know about their injuries because of the fear of losing their spot — examine your coach philosophy and see if your position is helping or hurting kids when it comes to reporting injuries.
In the end, maybe developing mental toughness should more explicitly include “knowing when to say when” as it applies to injuries. Developing mental toughness is time well spent, but we can become our own worst enemies when we become too headstrong. For more on developing a healthy level of mental toughness check out The Mental Toughness Guide to Athletic Success.
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