Training For Mental Toughness - Craig Sigl
Channel: Mental Toughness Trainer
Date: 2012-02-10

http://www.mentaltoughnesstrainer.com

Training For Mental Toughness 

In this short video, you will learn mental toughness tips that I shared with a group of wrestlers. Right before they went out to compete in their tournament.  And they won as a team by one point.  

What is mental toughness anyway?  Well, there is no standard definition, but I have come up with one and it comes down to this:  focus, confident, determined, and resilient.  Resilient basically means being able to bounce back.  Now, is that useful for wrestling and the rest of your life?  Yes, that's what I'm all about.  

Why work on the mental game other than to get to these specifics?  Well, one here is the real, the real benefit.  Every single screw up, every single choke, every single mistake you've ever made in wrestling or outside life, you can trace back to the mental game.  Coaches, and rightly so, will always tell you, "Man, you got to work hard!"  Success is working hard.  Absolutely!  I'm not alone with that.  

What if your mental game is not there?  What if you don't have determination?  Are you going to work hard?  What if you're not motivated?  Are you going to work hard?  What if you really just have some underlining beliefs that say, "You know I can't do this!  This guy is better than me."  Are you going to work hard?  No, literally your muscles will be weakened by your mind.  You will not perform at your potential.  

So that brings us to the formula for optimum performance.  Performance equals your potential minus your interference.  So this is what we're mainly going to talk about here today, because you guys have already got a potential.  It is here right now and it can expand every time you learn a new skill, even from what you are learning from me today.  That explodes and expands your potential.  

The only difference is get rid of this interference whether you're going to play your potential or not and what kind of performance that will result in today.

Here's the first interference that we need to start tackling.  It's belief.  Belief in yourself.  Now lots of coaches will go out there and say you've got to believe in yourself.  How many of you guys ever heard that?  Right, right!  What does that mean?  Who wants to volunteer and answer what is belief? 

"Confidence." More specifically is believing in yourself?
"Knowing that you are going to win."  That's fabulous.  How do you get there?  Have you ever been there?  You ever get that feeling that you just know you're going to win this one.  Sometimes.  What's that?
"When you have won it before."  That's a great one.  That's fabulous.  We're going to confidence.  

Absolutely, so I actually did an interview with one of the top sports psychologists in the country.  He works with tennis players.  And he said, "I don't know any other way to get confidence other than to have past success."  

And I said, "What?  What if you have never had past success?"  We don't come out of the womb with success.  We create it from somewhere -- right?  So this is what I really want you guys to believe.  You can create your own success from scratch out of nowhere.  Now how do you do that?  Well, it's really simple.  Start with what it is that you do well.  

Here is what we do as human beings and especially athletes.  We talk to ourselves.  We tell ourselves what we don't do well.  And we hear these voices in our head all the time.  "Well, I'm not good at this move."  "Well, I'm not good away on visiting."  "I'm not as good as that guy.  That guy pinned me last time.  He owns me."  Those are the kinds of things we tell ourselves.

What you need to do is tell yourselves what you're good at far more often.  It needs to be 10 to 1. Parents are real good at telling their kids what they don't do right and what we want them to do -- correct?  Yeah!  Some of you got parents that are like that.  

We as parents needs to be giving 10 to 1, "you're great!" versus the one you know you need improvement on.  It needs to be 10 to 1.
  
Visit http://www.teenmentaltoughness.com to download FREE: 

"The 10 Commandments For A Great Sports Parent" ebook
and  "Master The Pressure" a GAME-CHANGING guided visualization for teen athletes.