Mental toughness is not taught by absolutely obliterating someone on the field, NO!. Stupid training mechanisms like that fail because,its is not scientifically based. We cant forget that there is an entire field of psychology and many brilliant scientists dedicated to the study of this. Mental toughness is the ability to be able to cope with stress and refocus your mind onto the relevant information and continue to execute a performance. There are specific training protocols to help athletes accomplish this and they are done off the field by trained professionals. The things that you mention of how to be become mentally stronger at the end of you statement, is mental skills training. A means to develop the tools that are necessary to meet the broad definition of mental toughness. It is not just an inherent trait either. Those elite athletes you mentioned were shaped by their up bringing and the psychology of their brain (their “mental strength muscle”) was forever changed. They learned to act a certain way or do things a specific way. Carl, you have mentioned many times, the book “Don’t be Fooled by Randomness”. Those elite athletes got to the level they are because, they learned those skills and ways of analyzing performance. They were taught these skills. Not everyone has and additionally, when you are dealing with an attempt to reverse 20 years of thinking the opposite direction it isn’t an easy task. Some amount of inherent ability is required, it is undeniable, but the want the inherent want to succeed does not create success. Performance is trained and the performance of the brain is also trained just like everything else on the body. It simply takes a different type of training. Lastly, I would argue that the subjects that you are referring to as not being mentally tough, are people that if you interviewed tediously, would show sign that were they are is not what they really want to be focused on doing.
