Training for Mental Toughness

Steve Fraser -- Team USA Greco-Roman Coach
Recently I was asked by the US Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Department & Athlete Services Division to prepare a luncheon workshop on Mental Toughness. Mental toughness is a topic I write about often but can’t express enough how important it is.

What is Mental Toughness? By definition, toughness is to be strong & resilient; able to withstand great strain without tearing or breaking.” Mental toughness to me is being able to reach your Ideal Competitive State (ICS) on command.

What exactly is your Ideal Competitive State? Your ICS is your personal state of being that allows an individual to perform with their greatest potential. It is a state of being where an individual feels most energized, most confident & most strong. A state where you are generating positive emotions that help you be most alert, instinctive, responsive & creative. When you have that positive fighting attitude & are enjoying the battle (competition).

There are several emotions that can block your potential such as fear, confusion, low energy, fatigue, and helplessness. When you feel these negative emotions you should practice changing your mindset. This is when you must practice creating the positive emotions mention in the previous paragraph. There are everyday situations that can challenge your ICS: Lack of sleep, which make you sluggish & tired; referees that makes bad calls; girlfriends/boyfriends that break up with you; pressure from school/work/family…

Toughness is being able to create these positive emotions upon command, thus enabling you to bring all your talent & skills to life at that moment, no matter what negative thing(s) might be affecting you.

An example of this for me was in the 1984 Olympics, the night before I wrestled Frank Andersson - a powerful, golden-haired athlete, who enjoyed the status of a movie star in Sweden and who had claimed the World Championship in 1979, 1981 and 1982.
With his great strength and technique, his quickness, and his superb sense of balance, Andersson had devastated his first three opponents in these Olympic Games. Each of Andersson’s foes had served as a foil for his most breathtaking and crowd-pleasing throw, the high arcing “Back suplex”. Andersson was flamboyant, a thrower who could literally hurl his foes out of contention. I was unspectacular, a grinding, physical fighter who pounded his opponents into exhaustion. Andersson was the international wrestling community’s pick to win the Olympic title. I was considered a long shot.

Needless to say I went to bed that night a bit nervous. I had won my previous two matches earlier in the day but in the morning I would face my biggest challenge of my entire career. Frank Andersson had already been quoted in the LA Times saying “Since beating the Greek earlier today, now nothing stands in the way of my winning the Gold Medal.”

So as I lay in bed, I focused my mind not on winning or losing, but on only things that I could surely control. You can’t always control winning and losing but I knew I could control the pace and the intensity of the fight. I wanted to make the match exciting for the American crowd. I visualized myself defending the “Back suplex”, Andersson’s most powerful weapon. I saw myself stopping this spectacular throw over and over. Finally I drifted off to sleep.