The Four C’s of Mental Toughness
by Alex Barene, Mental Performance Coach
Mental toughness is both a trait, something we have, and a state, something we do. Further, it contains cognitive (thoughts), affective (emotions), and behavioral (action) properties. Cognitive factors relating to mental toughness include our internal beliefs, our self talk, and the way we think about ourselves. Affective factors include emotional and arousal regulation. Behavioral factors can include preparation, routines, goals, and other skills that we actually perform. These cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors help us positively adapt and cope with stressful situations. They also serve as protection to our self-esteem and self-efficacy.
The Four Cs of Mental Toughness:
Control
is having the ability to be the influence, rather than be influenced, to be proactive rather than reactive. It is having the ability to control your emotions, behaviors, and remain poised. Control helps us remain focused on the task at hand. When we have the ability to control our emotions, we can recognize when our emotions are causing our level of arousal to vary, which can lead to loss of concentration. Remember who’s in charge here; it’s you!
Commitment
means pursuing goals, and focusing our time and energy on achieving them. When we pursue goals, we are likely to encounter challenges. Being committed is about remaining dedicated to and determined despite setbacks on the path to achieving our goals.
Challenge
This is about how we appraise possible hardships/stressors. Do we perceive hardships as threats, or as opportunities for growth? Do we crumble under pressure, or rise to the occasion? Athletes who are able to take on the challenge stay the course, remain committed to their goals, and trust in the process they have developed. A determining factor in resilience will be whether you perceive stress as a challenge and decide that you’re up for it!
Confidence
is the ability to maintain self-belief despite setbacks. Athletes who are confident have strong self-talk, set task and process goals, and TRUST their training. Self talk is key here. The more athletes repeat a thought or phrase to themselves, the more likely it is to become a belief. Athletes who think positively about themselves, their training, and their competence, believe in their abilities and are confident when it matters most. You’ve been training for this. You’re ready!
by Alex Barene, Mental Performance Coach
The TALO Methodology
A quick dive into the TALO training system, its organizing principles and methods.
Sports Performance Empowered by Movement Skills
Translating training into better performance on the field is a tall task, but I believe the key to doing so lies in understanding Movement Skills. For field sports athletes, these movement skills are the different types of running actions that repeatedly occur in a cycle starting with an acceleration which achieves a relative max velocity, followed by a deceleration action and transition into another acceleration to start a new cycle.
When we use the term Speed & Agility, we are referring to “Speed” as the sprinting ability of accelerating and reaching a max velocity in a straight line and within a given distance; and the term “Agility” as the ability to decelerate and use a variety of movement strategies to transition, often towards a different direction, into the next acceleration. So although Speed & Agility feed into each other and are a part of the same Movement Skill cycle, the training for improving each of these skills is very different. Think of it as improving speed is more about the gas pedal, while improving agility is more about the breaks.
The movement skills connect our world of Performance Training to the Sports Performance realm. Think of defending actions in soccer, for example. The defender responds to a trigger to accelerate and close down the space to an attacker. As they get closer, they decelerate enough to have their body under control and ready to respond to the attacker’s next move. Once the attacker moves, they transition into their next action and accelerate to either tackle, intercept a pass, or race the attacker who’s trying to beat them. The entire toolbox of defensive skills is filled with movement skill executions of decision made based on player’s game insight (tactical knowledge). The same applies for the attacker, who can achieve a higher velocity to beat a defender if they understand how the length and direction of their touch will affect their ability to accelerate into higher speeds.
To improve each of these components of the Movement Skill cycle we break them down into two training focuses: Skill and Capacity. Skill relates to the athlete’s ability to achieve positions (mobility) and angles required for effective biomechanics involved in sprinting, decelerating, feints and cuts. Capacity is about the body’s ability to produce force (strength), how fast it produces it (power), and how long it can continue to produce it for (work capacity). The skill side has motor learning implications and is affected by our coaches ability to teach efficiently, while capacity has physiological implications and is affected by our ability to program strength, power, and energy system development exercises effectively.
Speed & Agility <- Power <- Strength <- Mobility
To improve Speed & Agility we reverse engineered its demands. Speed & Agility capacity is largely influenced by our ability to interact with the ground to move our body and its weight. Within this context, in the weight room we will focus on improving how quickly the athlete can produce force (Power), how much force they are able to produce (Strength), and the ranges of motion they can function within (Mobility).
Power
Speed and agility require powerful actions. These powerful actions occur within a spectrum of force and velocity, heavy or fast. A lot of force driven into the ground is required to get the body, which is relatively heavy, going onto a sprint. A lot of velocity needs to be generated to throw a baseball, which is relatively light, at competitive level speed. Both are powerful actions, but very different in nature.
High velocity movements highly benefit from the elastic nature of soft-tissues like muscles and tendons, so we include plyometrics and medicine ball throws into our programs. We use a variety of jumps, hops, and bounds to train the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) process for the lower body, and medicine ball throws with similar patterns to emphasize total body transfer of energy.
The lower leg and foot complex is a great example of how our bodies are built to utilize elasticity. The foot and its arch, the thick Achilles tendon, and powerful calf muscles are built to create trampoline like propulsion. When the ball of the foot hits the ground, the calf muscles will contract, which will lead the Achilles tendon into stretching and snapping like a strong and thick rubber band. The arch of the foot will go through a similar process, and if all of it is synchronized, a very powerful rebound away from the ground can be created.
For the medicine ball exercises, the intent is to break down powerful movements like sprinting into smaller, bite size pieces, that can be trained progressively. To support agility, for example, we may use rotational throws to teach athletes to produce force against the ground while rotating to transfer energy into a different direction. We will also use linear bounding movements to emphasize and train sprinting mechanics.
Weightlifting (the Clean & Jerk, Snatch, and its variations) is an advance modality of power training we use in later progressions. It requires an amazing balance of force production, high rate of production, and quickness between the actions involved.
Power training is highly neuromuscular so it can greatly affect motor learning and skill acquisition as well. The higher the intensity of the action the higher the neuromuscular demands. So, we like to use a variety of exercises for the same major movement patterns to increase the development of new neural branches which enhances complex motor control. We also want to stick to these major movement patterns so the intense repetitions lead to myelination of neuromuscular pathways, which will lead to faster neuromuscular communication, hence the development of speed.
Strength
Strength training will support the development of power from the perspective of increasing the athlete’s strength relative to their body weight. During the strength blocks, we will continue to program exercises with movement patterns similar to those used for power development, which were based on our movement skills (acceleration, upright sprinting, deceleration, and transitions). Remember, “repetition without repetition” to encourage branching of neuropathways.
We build our progressions based on two layers we call “Movement Progressions” and “Stimuli Progressions”. These progressions are key to a successful program for training Speed & Agility, as well as Strength & Conditioning. They are guided by two basic but key principles: Specificity and Progressive Overload.
Specificity dictates that, to improve a physical capacity, we must provide the specific stimulus (exercises) that stresses that capacity and drives adaptation. Progressive Overload dictates that the stress drives the human body to adapt and become stronger, and a superior stress will be needed to drive adaptation again. It is also very important to point out that adaptations occur during the recovery process and only if the body is allowed to sufficiently recover.
Movement Progressions are the variations of exercises for developing the ability to perform a given patterns. For example; to teach a squatting pattern, we often begin with single leg variations, then progress to split positions, then to a combination of heavy bilateral lifts like a Back Squat, and fast unilateral lifts like a Speed Split Squat to Bench. Stimuli Progressions are the combinations of load and volume variables; which includes sets, reps, weight, tempo, rest between sets, among other more advance parameters. The appropriate prescriptions here are key to guide athletes towards their goals.
We can’t simply do 3 sets x 10 reps of a bunch of exercises and expect results to continue.
Another key aspect of resistance training is its role in reinforcing athletes’ mobility. To improve joints’ range of motion, we frame our mobility progressions into exercises that address the segment (left hip), the pattern (flexion-rotation), and the global movement (front leg action in sprinting). Strength training principles are applied to the closing side of a segment to improve its functional range, and to patterning exercises to improve how muscles are working together to create a movement. We’ll come back to this, but first let’s dive into how mobility issues come about.
Mobility
Mobility restrictions are mostly influenced by bone structure, joint capsules, the soft-tissues involved, or neurological blocks.
Neurological blocks are subconscious interventions acted upon by the Central Nervous System when it perceives a range of motion as risky or problematic. This is possible because of sensory information gathered by muscle spindles and Golgi tendon organs, which inform the CNS about changes and speed of changes in length of muscles and tendons. They work as a protective mechanism, and must be dealt with if we want any success improving athletes’ mobility. To address this, we target specific mobility needs found during our performance assessments with Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) exercises. These exercises involve a combination of stretching with isometric contractions, and offer a great level of neuromuscular communication.
Soft-tissues like muscles, tendons, and fascia layers are susceptible to damage from normal stresses such as in sports. Because of their contractile nature, fibers can suffer minor tears, layers of different tissues can become adhesive to each other, and tissues can become dehydrated. All of those issues lead to less contractibility or flexibility, and can contribute to loss of range of motion. Massage therapy, or self-myofascial release work are effective in recovering soft-tissue health, and paired with PNF stretching exercises, can lead to improvements in range. These improvements are reinforced by strength work that utilizes these full ranges of motion.
Joint Capsules aren’t an actual structure, but the combination of all tissues that encapsulate the free space and fluids within a joint. These tissues; including ligaments, muscles and tendons, and membranes, work together to maintain joint function and stability. A disfunction within the joint capsule offers a bigger challenge to mobility. These issues are often painful, and require a greater level of neuromuscular facilitation to overcome. We use controlled articular rotations (CAR) to enhance afferent communication (information received by our sensory organs and transmitted to the CNS), paired with PNF exercises and reinforced by resistance training to address this. As you can tell, it takes more than the usual static stretching to make real changes in mobility.
Bone Structure constraints are our most challenging problem. Immediate changes can only be achieved with surgical interference, but bone remodeling is possible with long term consistent mobility work.
Performance Assessment & Sports Science Monitoring
Performance training programs for a specific sport are very similar, with exceptions to individualities of each athletes. These differences are mapped out during our Performance Assessment process, and the progress made with training is monitored with sports science concepts and technologies.
The Performance Assessment consists of three profiling sections: Mobility, Power, and Speed. For mobility, we assess the passive and active range of motion for each major joint starting from toes and working all the way up to the shoulders. The key here is to look further than to simply establish if the joint has suficiente range of motion or not, but also identify if there’s strength at all ranges. Here; the greater the specificity, the greater the solution.
To profile athlete’s capacity to produce power, we look at three different jumping exercises. The first two, non-countermovement and countermovement jumps, helps understand if the athlete relies more on powerful muscle contractions or the elasticity and rebounding effects of tendons’ stretch-shortening cycle. It can also expose athletes’ lack of strength or stability to control the transition between the downward and upward swing during the jump. The third exercise is a Double Contact Vertical Jump. This is performed by a initiating jump following by a fast and powerful bounce for a second jump. The intent is to measure the second jump, its ground contact time and height, to assess the athletes reactive strength index (RSI). This RSI measure tells us a lot about the health of the lower extremity (leg and foot), and the athlete’s ability to utilize its spring board like structures to generate a powerful rebound against the ground.
Along the same lines; the speed profile assessment consists of a 30 meter sprint. The sprint is timed and average velocity for each 10-meter segment is gathered to create an acceleration curve. This curve, paired with the coaches’ qualitative biomechanical analysis gives us a better understanding about the athlete’s tendencies, strengths and weaknesses, when sprinting.
Sports Science practices are applied throughout the duration of the training programs following assessments. The goal is to monitor progress, or the lack there of, to inform performance coaches of when to make changes and ensure athletes’ training is successful.