As part of URB Brain Basket, the Rennes basketball club (URB) invited me to reflect on Mental Endurance in high-performance sport. Two prominent figures from the basketball world also joined the session for sharing and discussion: Yannick Bokolo, a former international, and Mehdi Mary, current coach of CSP Limoges.
Because this topic is central to a high-level athlete's life, I wanted to share these reflections in two articles. In this second part I address the question: how can we improve the mental skill that is Mental Endurance?
Immersion in the brainstorming session
mental endurance is the ability to repeat and sustain high-intensity efforts over time, regardless of successes and failures
— Pascal Thibaud
The more effective the coach is, the better the players will be. The challenge is to become more competent yourself and to learn to manage both yourself and the environment. My role is to create the conditions for my players to perform well by being competent myself. Players must/should invest in themselves in these areas (mental preparation). Another objective is to work early with young players to develop their intrinsic motivation and autonomy: these are excellent supports for mental endurance.
— Mehdi Mary
How to improve Mental Endurance?
Remember! Mental Endurance includes: accepting to suffer for performance, whether in competition or training, whether for an individual or team goal, continuing to believe in yourself, to challenge yourself, to want to exceed your limits, to fight over time, accept challenges and seek to improve and be consistent, deciding to commit or recommit to effort across a season, facing external pressures, facing the continuous challenges life throws at us or those demanded by high-performance sport (...)
How to develop an athlete's Mental Endurance? What levers do athletes and coaches have?
Confidence in oneself: it truly plays a decisive role in motivation, determination, perseverance and self-sacrifice. Confidence is inseparable from commitment, and therefore from performance.
Open-mindedness: this may be a lesser-known dimension but it is rooted in basketball as in other sports. How do elite athletes from other countries operate or react? In basketball, models are often American, but not exclusively. In Europe and elsewhere many players and coaches will cite the mental strength of countries in southeast Europe (the former Yugoslavia).
Cultural differences: in that same spirit of open-mindedness, this underlines the need to observe and to ask how performance and mental strength emerge in certain teams and nations.
Work: yes, it may sound simplistic to mention it... but it remains the number-one key along with confidence for any performance and, naturally, for the capacity to "endure". And we mean work in its entirety: tactical, physical, mental and technical. Some will tell you: "Winners train, losers complain." A well-known quote in the basketball world.
To these levers I would add: education, the ability to manage your emotions and stress, knowing yourself, discovering yourself, surprising yourself, learning, understanding your role, finding your own resources, new resources, reinventing yourself, loving, being passionate, ... and since the list is long I'll finish by reminding the essential point already mentioned in the Part 1 of this article: "The Goal".
Yannick Bokolo's tips
Throughout my career I was inspired by different coaches from different backgrounds and I used their perspectives to improve my game, my qualities as a basketball player, as a man and as a competitor. I sought to go into more detail, to take a nuanced approach to game systems. As a point guard, it seemed crucial to me to understand how each teammate's position functions. When you play with teammates from other countries and cultures, it's essential to understand their playing culture, the differences, the preferred systems (...).
— Yannick Bokolo
A big THANK YOU, Yannick, for sharing your experience!!
Resilience and mental endurance
To close this topic on Mental Endurance, I offer a question that was raised during the brainstorming: Is there a link between resilience and mental endurance? And what if mental strength—the capacity to endure—were a form of resilience? Maybe the subject of a future article ;-)
See you soon!
Frédéric
Working group
URB Core Brain Basket
- Pascal Thibaud, coach and technical director of URB
- Damien Leduc, URB executive team
- Lucas Fontaine, player and captain of URB
- Claire Gully-Lhonoré, sport psychologist
Guests for the session:
- Yannick Bokolo, former French international
- Mehdi Mary, current coach of CSP Limoges
- Frédéric Damato, mental performance coach
