How would you like to stop choking in clutch situations? What if opponents never intimidated you ever again? How much more would you win if you played as well in competition as your best practices? How much more playing time would you get if you were known by coaches as the hardest working player on the team?

This is mental toughness.

Far too many athletes and coaches believe you either have the gift of mental toughness or you don’t. This is simply not true as anyone can learn and develop mental toughness through training, repetition and conditioning the same way athletes get good at passing, catching, tackling, blocking, etc.

My definition of mental toughness is simply this: focused, confident, determined and resilient … especially under pressure.

Let’s go into each of the main elements of mental toughness and the training to get it:

Focused. This is nothing more than the ability to direct your mind, use conscious control of your thinking and not let your mind run you. We teach many mental training exercises to improve focus, but you can make a big jump right here, right now by recognizing that you already have an amazing ability to focus. Even if you have ADD, you have used that focusing ability many times in the past to get something done, especially when you were excited and interested in that activity, right? Like when playing video games for instance? Simply recognize and recall that ability and ask yourself how you can bring it over to sports.

Confident. I’ve heard it said that confidence comes from success. Well how do you get success when you don’t feel confident? The answer lies in picking apart what you mean by success. It’s a totally subjective word. In other words, you can start feeling success from very small, simple accomplishments. Use that focus to direct your mind constantly on what you are good at and a never-ending positive outlook on what you can and have achieved and you will build your confidence from scratch. This will give you the seeds of success and you will develop even more confidence, which in turn, creates more success. Rinse and repeat.

Determined. In youth sports, this is usually what separates the good from the great players. Coaches often call it “heart,” and you don’t make it to the elite football world without it. You increase this in yourself by constantly thinking about the benefits of something bigger than just experiencing the thrill of winning. When you play for a cause, a family, to prove yourself or to witness your faith and belief systems, then your determination goes into overdrive. This gives fuel to a potent work ethic that drives you to train and practice harder and more efficiently than your competition. Winning flows from that hard work.

Resilient. Every football player makes mistakes and has failures at some point. You can have the other traits, but without the ability to bounce back, you will never last long enough to be a champion. Resiliency comes partly from determination but more importantly from how you perceive your world. One athlete can be destroyed by a setback while the other will take that same setback as a major learning and get all fired up from it and turn it into an advantage. This skill gets improved by looking at situations in different ways than the average person would. When a football player conditions the mind to this: “Everything that happens to me makes me stronger, more intelligent and a better athlete,” that’s when true mental toughness has been achieved.

Wherever you are at right now, you can build your mental toughness and mental strength and get the mindset of a champion for the game … and for life.

Craig Sigl’s work with youth athletes has been featured on NBC TV and ESPN. Get his free ebook: “The 10 Commandments For a Great Sports Parent” and also a free training and .mp3 guided visualization to help young athletes perform under pressure by visiting: http://MentalToughnessTrainer.com.