Mr. Foyle asserts that coaches have proclaimed repeatedly that sports are 80% mental. As a professional athlete, while he disagrees with that number, he agrees with the sentiment. If you are an athlete with great physical talent but do not possess proper mental skills, your game is seriously flawed. The idea is that mental skills are undervalued in sports.
When experts and analysts tell us they notice that a player disappears during crunch time or they say something like, "He is an exceptional athlete overall but something is missing from his game," that something is most often a lack of mental toughness.
On the other hand, an average athlete who possesses a combination of strong physical and mental skills can be outstanding and very effective on a team. Those same experts and analysts will say things like, "He is an emotionally tough kid," or "If I am going into battle, I want this player on the front lines with me." These statements reaffirm the impact that an athlete's mental skills development has on their success.
Managing mental and physical skills AND emotions are key fundamentals if an athlete wants to excel in his sport. An athlete can have all the talent in the world yet if he lacks emotional intelligence and acts like a fool on the field or court, he will find himself unemployed really quickly.
Harnessing one's emotions and releasing them at the appropriate time is a powerful weapon an athlete can possess in his quiver of opportunity. When people say sports is mental, what they're talking about is how an athlete controls the inevitable conflicts that arise out of athletic competition, both at the high and lower levels of sports.
Any sport is a constant battle between the mental and the physical but great athletes with strong mental skills can bring these two forces into alignment. And when I say "great athlete," I don't mean an All-Star, a Hall of Famer, or the traditional definition of greatness--I mean creating a balanced athlete who can reach their full athletic potential. Sports competition by its very nature is constantly trying to take you off your game. The mental athlete must understand that leveraging physical talent and skills alone is not the correct way to approach your playing career. One must come equipped with mental fortitude as well as physical aptitude.
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