When you become an athlete, you embark on a challenging but rewarding journey that requires commitment. You’ll be required to train day and night, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and continue pushing your limits to expand your athletic capabilities to grow stronger physically and mentally.
Knowing when to push your training and scale back, however, is a fine line that requires advanced self-assessment skills so you don’t confuse mental toughness training with carelessness and risk an injury from participating in intensive uniformed service fitness tests that would put you out of training for months and set your progress back.
Achieving mental toughness doesn’t and shouldn’t require you to sustain an injury that leaves you unable to train for several weeks. It’s a personal skill that develops with time, consistency, and trust in your training.
While taking part in assessment tests may seem necessary to monitor your fitness level and capabilities, you must have developed all aspects of your physique to be fully prepared to participate in the arduous event.
Tactical fitness is an intensive but newer fitness area that focuses on developing your mental, physical, and survival skills, giving you the skills necessary to perform essential uniformed service duties that include running, rucking, swimming, jumping, climbing, crawling, and rescuing a buddy.
This fitness form requires cardiovascular conditioning, muscle coordination, stamina, speed, power, strength, and agility to be at optimal levels to carry out your duties effectively.
Even with these other skills mastered, your mental toughness is still an essential skill that requires training so you can remain calm in high-stress scenarios and make calculated decisions based on accurate self-assessments to prevent injuries that would be detrimental to your performance.
To become mentally tough, acquire a will of steel, and develop the courage and discipline needed to excel, follow these tips:
Early Exercises
Acquiring mental toughness requires you to separate yourself from your comfort zone. One of the best ways to achieve this is through early-morning workouts because when your alarm rings, you’ll have to leave the comforts of your warm bed to endure strenuous physical activity.
Breaking away from that comfort and becoming accustomed to the discomfort of training early in the morning improves your sense of commitment and discipline.
This level of mental control is essential for a tactical athlete’s success.
Kids that grew up playing sports will likely have already started developing their mental toughness without you even realising it.
Impact Sports
High-impact sports like rugby and football test your mental toughness daily because contact sports can lead to sprains, bumps, bruises, sprains, jammed fingers, or other injuries.
Combat sports, like boxing and MMA, require you to engage in one-on-one combat and put everything you have into defeating your opponent, which requires heightened mental toughness.
When you factor in discomfort, pain, and injuries, having accurate self-assessment skills and mental toughness become vital for your well-being in stressful environments because careless decisions can result in injuries and failure.
There will be days when you do not want to train. For those days, it is vital to conduct the morning workouts because you must become comfortable within uncomfortable scenarios to excel and achieve the mental fortitude required for long-term success.
If you are determined to take part in uniformed service fitness tests, you are welcome. However, you should only participate in such tests if you have undergone and completed the necessary training and are fully prepared.