How to Use Self-Determination Theory to Build Mental Toughness

Mental toughness isn’t about yelling louder - it’s about creating the conditions for athletes to thrive under pressure.

The SDT Framework

Most coaches want their athletes to be “mentally tough.” But in practice, mental toughness is often confused with grinding harder, punishing mistakes, or simply “pushing through.”

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is an evidence-based framework of human motivation and offers a better way. As coaches, we can intentionally shape the environment for our athletes to foster autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

These qualities will help athletes develop better intrinsic motivation, more resilience in facing adversity, and better capability to perform under pressure.

Autonomy: Give Athletes Real Ownership

Athletes who feel they have ownership of their process - or even parts of it - are able to stay motivated through less than ideal situations. 

The old-school coach-centered philosophy pushes back against this idea because it feels that coaches shouldn't be subservient to athletes. But that's not what this means.

Giving athletes ownership doesn't mean you make yourself a pushover as a coach - it just means that you relinquish a little bit of control to demonstrate your respect for your athletes and to develop a collaborative approach to goal-setting and performance.

Here are a few simple ways to give athletes autonomy:

• Give multiple exercise options in a lift
• Let them put together their own warm-up
• Give them the aux (You'll eventually come around to Big Bootie Mix...)
• Explain your rationale for choosing certain drills / exercises and connect that rationale to their performance potential

There are obviously many more ways to give athletes ownership, but you should have a firm grasp of the principle.

Autonomy forms the foundation of mental toughness. Because when shit gets hard, it's easy for athletes to feel like they have no control. But when you gradually introduce self-ownership into their process, they are able to maintain high levels of performance - even in adverse situations.

Competence: Mastery = Confidence

Mindless repetition has been the default operating system for decades in sport. And while repetition has its place in skill acquisition and motor learning, it must be PURPOSEFUL.

This is where competence comes into play.

You can help your athletes develop competence by:

• having a progression in place for skill aqcuisition
• having a system for giving - and receiving - feedback
• recognizing incremental improvements

These simple strategies will improve confidence and self-belief so that when athletes are in pressure situations, they can demonstrate their competence by executing their skills at the level their capable of.

When you're already time-constrained and operating with less than ideal resources, it can be easy to default to mindless repetition. But being the self-aware and growth-minded coaches you are, you probably already have some of these strategies in place, but hopefully this gives you a few more ideas for how competence leads to confidence.

Relatedness: Create a Supportive Team Culture

We've all heard the "culture beats strategy" cliche by now. But what is culture and how do you build it?

I can tell what it's not: dictating rules and processes to your athletes - this is the old-school, coach-centered approach. Red flags include coaches who talking about "implementing their culture."

Your athletes will probably work and play hard for you, but ultimately they want to connect with each other on a deeper level. This is relatedness: a sense of sharing a common vision, values, and goals.

It's the coach's job to facilitate these connections that ultimately develop the strong team culture we all want. There are many ways to do this that may seem as cliche as "culture beats strategy" but it comes down to authenticity and implementation.

Some examples:

• Let team leaders create 2-3 team rituals - as simple as wearing the same color socks or maybe the opposite, letting each athlete express their individuality and wear whatever socks they want (also fosters autonomy)
• Pair upperclassmen with underclassmen - but also give guidance on how / what upperclassmen should be demonstrating to underclassmen (could be as simple as "here are our team rituals and here's why we chose them")
• Split your team into small groups and let them identify team values in a pre-season meeting - then have each group share the values they chose and why (then narrow down 3-5 values to use to define the team's culture and standards)

The result will be a strong team culture where athletes feel supported, free to communicate openly, and connected with their teammates on a deeper level. This will allow them to take more calculated risks, recover faster from setbacks, and perform better because their "why" is deeper than winning games.

Integrating SDT into Daily Coaching

Think of autonomy, relatedness, and competence as lenses for every training session.

Can you give autonomy by offering two conditioning options that hit the same outcome?

Can you improve competence by setting clear skill standards and giving concise feedback?

Can you strengthen relatedness by using partner drills or structured peer coaching?

When SDT is engrained in your coaching, mental toughness develops naturally rather than being forced (or probably not developed at all...)

Rethink “Mental Toughness”

It ain't old-school "grit" - that's just another word for surviving suffering. Athlete-centered SDT coaching builds mental toughness through improving athletes' capacity for dealing with adversity by developing better internal resources.

This approach leads to better outcomes because athletes have a stronger sense of purpose and connection and feel supported.

Reflection

Take a moment to audit your environment this week.

Where are you giving autonomy, building competence, and fostering connection? 

Use this reflective practice worksheet to see where you are doing well in these areas and where you might be able to improve.

As always, thanks for reading!

Tim Kettenring

Maverick Human Performance