Mental Fitness

Training the mind

One of the core tenets of this newsletter is my belief that coaches are performers and moving forward, that coaches who prepare, recover and train like performers are setting themselves up for success. Coaching inevitably presents challenges and opportunities, so how can ensure that you have the skills and resources to adapt and meet challenges and take advantage of opportunities?

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll introduce Mental Fitness and how this framework and its’ principles can help you perform at your best.

1. What is Mental Fitness?

Mental fitness, as defined by a group of Australian researchers, is “the modifiable capacity to utilize resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving.”

Your mental fitness isn’t static, it’s changeable. Resources and skills are learnable. The ability to adapt and respond productively to challenges or advantages is trainable. Mental fitness is within your control.

2. Key principles of Mental Fitness:

The mental fitness model suggests there are 4 key principles of mental fitness:

Fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness.

We can grasp the idea of physical health without stigma. Reducing the stigma around mental illness and leaning on mental fitness leads to a healthier and more flexible understanding of how our minds work.

Mental fitness could be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness.

This framework views mental and physical fitness as equal parts of a holistic approach to well-being and optimal performance. Mental fitness can be understood as a proactive, preventative, and important step in allowing us to perform optimally, instead of an approach to get us out of a slump.

Mental fitness is measurable.

There are research, theory, and evidence-based practices that can be used to develop preventative and proactive mental fitness.

Mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness.

We can train and improve our mental fitness. The authors of the study highlighted, “Evidence in positive psychology and the neural plasticity literature suggests the brain has the ability to change and adapt as a result of experience and learning new behaviors throughout life.”

3. Mental Fitness Training

So what can mental fitness training look like in action? I particularly like the example provided by the authors to understand the different components of mental fitness:

Just like physical fitness, we can run, practice yoga, lift, and do CrossFit and end up physically fit. The most important decision you can make is to simply start. Not sure where to start? Take it from the University of Arizona Sport Psychologist, Dr. Mike Clark: