Exactly what is toughness training?

              Toughness training is the art and science of increasing your ability to handle all kinds of stress- physical, mental, and emotional- so that you’ll be a more effective competitor. It’s highly sophisticated minimizing the risk of physical injuries and emotional setbacks that so often end in overtraining.

A key element in Toughness training is improving your recovery from stress routines during practice and between competitions. Most sports have recovery breaks during play, but many athletes being unfamiliar with the techniques given her, can’t take full advantage of those crucial opportunities for recovery.

Off the water there are equally important recovery demands; for sleep, food, diversion, rest, time off, and so on. Balancing the stress of training and competition with adequate recovery is vital. Failing to do so would always undermine an athlete’s potential.  To achieve that essential balance you have to know how to recognize when you’re out of balance. Toughness Training gives you the necessary understandings.

What Does Toughness Training Toughen?

Your mind, body, and emotions will become more flexible, responsive, resilient, and stronger- the real meaning of tough as used here- through toughness training.

How do we do it? Specific exercises for toughening each of the physical, mental, and emotional spheres that make up the whole person.

To understand the meaning of toughness, you must first grasp the meaning of talent. Some have it big time and some not much at all. Talent is genetic potential. Athletes cannot take credit for it, as it is a gift. Theoretically, talent defines the outer limits of your athletic achievement. If you’re gifted, a real natural, the idea is that you can be great. However if Mother Nature’s gift was less than generous, the assumption is that nothing special can happen athletically.

Skill, where talent is a gift, skills are learned. The mechanics of jumping, running, shooting, hitting, and kicking are skills. They are acquired through hard work, repetition, and practice. Theoretically, skills affect achievement in sport in much the same way talent does. Poor physical skills seriously limit potential for success, and great physical skills open it up.

So how does a person with no special talent or skill become one of the world’s best athlete’s by not being the soundest mechanical perfection? The answer is toughness!

What is Toughness?

Toughness is the ability to consistently perform toward the upper range of your talent and skill regardless of competitive circumstances.

Toughness has nothing to do with a killer instinct or being mean. It also has nothing to do with being cold, calloused, hard, insensitive or ruthless. It is however all flexible, responsive, strong and resilient under pressure.

There are four keys to Toughness:

1. Emotional Flexibility – The ability to absorb unexpected emotional turns and remain supple, non-defensive, and balanced. The ability to summons a wide range of positive emotions (fun, joy, fighting, spirit, humor) to competition. Inflexible athletes are rigid and defensive in emotional crisis and therefore are easily broken down. Emotional inflexibility indicates a lack of toughness.

1. Emotional Responsiveness- the ability to remain emotionally alive, engaged, and connected under pressure. Responsive competitors are not calloused, withdrawn, or lifeless as a race rages. Emotional unresponsiveness also reveals a lack of toughness.

1. Emotional Strength- The ability to exert and resist great force under emotionally pressure. To sustain a powerful fighting spirit against impossible odds. The inability to fight emotionally is nearly synonymous with a lack of toughness.

1. Emotional Resiliency- The ability to take a punch emotionally and bounce back quickly. To recover quickly form disappointments, mistakes and missed opportunities and jump back into the race fully ready to resume the fight. Slow emotional recovery indicates a lack of toughness.

Toughness is learned! Toughness has nothing to do with genetics or inherited instincts. It is acquired in precisely the same way all skills are. If you do not have it, it simply means you have not learned it. Anyone can learn to get tougher at ANY stage in his or her life.

Toughness is a skill that enables you to bring all your talent and skill to life on demand. You may have the talent of a Michael Jordan and the skill of Lance Armstrong, but if you do not have toughness, it’s as if neither existed. With toughness you can learn whatever mechanical skills are needed and toughness will push your talent to its absolute limits. Only through toughness can you discover your real limits. Far too many athletes sell themselves short by assuming they are not talented enough. The limiting factor for most athletes is not talent but toughness.

Toughness will allow you to meet your Ideal Performance, which exists for every athlete. It’s simply the optimal state of physiological and psychological arousal for performing at your peak. Arousal is reflected in heart rate, muscle tension, brain wave frequency, blood pressure, and a host of other receptors. (IP) Ideal Performance is typically accompanied by a highly distinctive pattern of feelings and emotions. You will most likely experience IP and perform at your peak when you feel:

Confident

Relaxed and Calm

Energized with positive emotion

Challenged

Focused and alert

Automatic and instinctive

Ready for fun and enjoyment

Some emotions are empowering and free your talent and skill.; other emotions are disempowering and lock your potential out. Empowering emotions are those associated with challenge, drive, confidence, determination, positive fight, energy and spirit.

Disempowering emotions are those associated with feelings of fatigue,, helplessness, insecurity, low energy, weakness, fear, and confusion.

The reasons why emotions are so key are its connections to arousal. Emotions are biomechanical events in the brain that can lead to a cascade of powerful changes in your body. These changes move you either closer or further away from your ideal performance. Fear mover you away, confidence brings you closer; temper and rage move you away, fun and enjoyment bring you back.

Toughness is mental, physical, and emotional.

What you think and visualize, how you act, when you eat, the quantity and quality of your rest and the level of fitness determines your emotional state at any time.

Tough thinking, tough acting, fitness, proper rest and diet are prerequisites for feeling tough. Too many athletes make the mistake of thinking that toughness is simply a mental thing.

This is where we meet the notion of the “Circle of Excellence”.

The Circle of Excellence is when each person can not survive without this life chain. The athlete depends upon not only themselves but their complete environment in which they live. This circle is more a chain that connects a strong bond between athletic endeavors and daily life. This chain is only as strong as the weakest link. If one link in the chain becomes fractured or separated the life chain is now damaged. Without this chain the athlete may not continue with success.

Links of the chain included are:

-Family

-Friends

-Education

-Faith

-Volunteerism and mentoring

-Self

Without this uniform circle toughness and complete emotional state will not be complete, resulting in an unbroken chain. These thoughts, feelings and interactions are all the physical inclusions of the athletes emotional state.

The Software-Hardware Analogy to the Ideal Performance of the Physical Emotional State Model

Hardware                                                                                         Software

              (“Processor / Body”)                                                     Talent – Genetic/Innate (can not increase)

Hardware refers to the thinking feeling body.                                           Skill- Can be constantly upgraded (training)

   - Must maintain health to interpret incoming information                                    -      Running

   - If this is not up to speed--> Need to update processor                                   -  Repetition Training

          

•                                                                                                                    - Eating

U.P.S./ Power Supply  

              (Emotional)

• Self Determination                                                                                          Trash Can
• Positive Drive                                                                                  (Complete Power Failure or Surges)
• Relaxation                                                                                                            - Negative feelings/Doubt
• Motivation                                                                                                            - Rage
• Energy                                                                                                                   - Fatigue
• Challenge                                                                                                             - Fear
• Confidence                                                                                                          - Pain/Discomfort
• Life Chain                                                                                                             - Incomplete Life Chain/ Missing Links