“The greatest adaption of the athlete happens between the ears.”
- Greg Glassman, founder of Crossfit
What is one of the top things we, as athletes, prioritize for longevity in our sports? Answers vary but one of the most critical aspects is building and maintaining mental toughness.
You might find a competitor in your sport doing extra accessory work after their sessions. Maybe you’re watching someone on race day as they sprint so hard during the final stretch, that they puke or collapse to the ground after crossing the finish line. You may even think of your favorite professional athlete shooting free throws (and making them) on a fully ruptured left Achilles tendon. These descriptions exemplify an athlete’s PHYSICAL toughness, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
MENTAL toughness is the way that you execute a course of action. It is not a shield to protect you in the face of obstacles, it’s a spear; mental toughness is having what many call a “weaponized” mind. A mind that is to be used on offense or to help you win. How do we get this mental toughness? It involves developing foundational characteristic traits like discipline, fortitude, focus, and grit. Today, I want to concentrate on one of the fundamental and most crucial elements of mental toughness, focus.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of focus, let’s discuss what gets in the way of our focus: distractions. Every one of us is surrounded by things trying to steal our attention; text message notifications, timers, emails, reminders…these external distractions produce quite the opposite effect of focus. However, every single person reading this wrestles with something even more difficult to control: internal distractions. Internal distractions are our thoughts, emotions, and triggers that challenge us, and get in the way of building mental toughness. Why would we need to control our thoughts, emotions, and triggers? If we can control our responses to those things when they surface in our lives, we can become tougher, next-level competitors. We can become people (not just athletes) who are unperturbed, collected, confident, fierce, and most importantly, unstoppable. I always like to say, “better people, make better athletes.”
Emotions and thoughts are inconsistent. They come and go, and they are not a reliable source to build beliefs about ourselves. What happens is the less control we have over our responses to thoughts and emotions, the more inconsistent (or less focused) we act. This poses a problem in our sport and also in everyday life. Let’s use a very practical example that has probably applied to you at some point.
You get a terrible night of sleep. You wake up, head to the gym, and your coach has programmed a bunch of sprints and a one-rep max deadlift. You get through the first few sets feeling fine yet tired, but you don’t PR your deadlift. Thoughts start popping up after you leave the gym like, “I’ve been showing up every single day and working this program, have I not gained any strength?” or maybe, “I must really suck at deadlifts.” These thoughts automatically trigger possible emotions like stress, embarrassment, fear, and disappointment. These emotions lead to unconscious, or maybe even conscious, reactions like DoorDash-ing some ice cream that day which throws your clean eating streak off track too, and now you skip the gym whenever there are deadlifts programmed. The reality of what happened was that you simply didn’t sleep well the night before and that had an effect on your performance THAT DAY. We want to be tough enough to not be affected by our thoughts and emotions to maintain consistency and longevity in our sports. Mental toughness is not built in the one big moment in the spotlight (the one rep max deadlift, let’s say), it’s built in the little daily moments of focus and commitments (coming to the gym every day, working with your coach’s programming even when you don’t feel like it or you’re not good at it, coming back the day AFTER you’ve disappointed yourself in the gym).
As you can see, it is not the reality of what happens to us but the way we interpret it, that influences our thoughts, emotions, and responses. We want to be mentally tough enough to not be distracted by our thoughts and emotions, and here’s why: if we can control our responses to thoughts and emotions, we can control our level of focus. I found a good summary of our thoughts distracting us, in this quote: “The voice in our head doesn't care what we do, it just wants to argue through and through.”
Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian psychologist said, “between stimulus (in our case, that would be our triggering thoughts or emotions) and response (our action) there is a space. In that space, is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and freedom.”
Focus leads to growth and freedom. You might question how being focused ties into freedom, and to that, I would quote a polish, 21st-century philosopher Karol Józef Wojtyła who says, “freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want, it’s the [discipline] ability to do what you ought.”
Having laser focus within the context of mental toughness means that no matter what someone does or says to you, no matter what obstacle arises, and no matter what thoughts or emotions come up…you are not reacting distractedly to those things. You can and will keep going, regardless.
Okay, that’s cool, but how do we achieve this level of focus?
Let me leave you with a few practical tips: NOTICE, PAUSE, re-FOCUS
NOTICE: Become a student of yourself and build a desire to rewire and relearn unhelpful thinking patterns; specifically, pay attention to the critic in your own head. No one is going to coach you more than that voice inside your head, so do you want that coach to point out all the negatives and let it talk down to you? Or do you want it to help you stay on track and look for opportunities to grow?
PAUSE: Take the time (hopefully in silence) to stop and think about how you were talking to yourself during a particular thought/emotion/trigger. If you’re in the moment, BREATHE. Deep diaphragmatic breathing will get you from a fight-or-flight (reactive/sympathetic) state to a rest and digest (responsive/parasympathetic) state where you can focus, choose how you want to respond, and maintain mental toughness.
re-FOCUS: Remember that reactive people act out because of triggers, but we want to RESPOND with intentional focus. Focus only on your effort, what can you ALWAYS control in a situation? Your mindset i.e. how you think, respond and act when anything happens to you.
Just like anything else, the more you practice this the easier it becomes.
Written by Giuliana Shakarian
Hi! My name is Giuliana Shakarian; to most of my athletes, friends, and family however I’m better known as “G”. I grew up playing a variety of sports: soccer, basketball, volleyball, and track and field. I’ve always loved sports, so much so that in college I coached High School Volleyball and Track & Field. I was introduced to and fell in love with Crossfit nine years ago and haven’t stopped since. I’ve been coaching Crossfit for 3-years and am also a passionate mental health advocate. I have a masters in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy. However, my true passion is learning and understanding mindset and sports psychology, in order to better the everyday athlete.
You can follow G on Instagram and Twitter handles are @thesassycannoli
Extra Resources
If you are interested in learning more about maintaining focus, particularly within the area of mental toughness, here are some classic books to help you along your journey.
Grit by Angela Duckworth
Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron
Relentless by Tim S. Grover
The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal, PhD