What are Mental Skills and why do we need Mental Skills Training?

Mindset. Psycho Social. Social Emotional. Leadership Skills. Mental Skills.  There are a lot of different terms used and a lot of confusion around what Mental Skills are and why we seem to need to focus on them in the sports world. I think before we can dive into why they are needed, we must define what they are. Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and performance psychologist Michael Gervais, explain mental skills as a player's Mindset. English Premier League sports psychologist, Dan Abrahams explains it as Psycho Social skills.  But here at  FEMALE FOOTBALLERS we call them Mental Skills. And our definition is as follows:  Mental Skills are evidence-based social- emotional skills and strategies to help players perform better in sport. We often call them the intangibles, the things you can’t see, the game changing element in sports. And although coaches, parents and players are aware that these skills are important, they often don’t prioritize them enough. 

So why do we need Mental Skills Training so badly? The easy answer: our younger generations are lacking executive functioning skills and social emotional skills. But let's back up a bit. First off, children and teens today are living in a society that is all about instant gratification. When we aren’t able to do something for ourselves, our parents often do it for us. Helicopter parents or the snowplow parents who overschedule us, set up our next step for us, and solve every problem for us. As a parent, the world moves at such a fast pace, we often find it easier to help our children do every little thing,  than have the patience needed to watch them do it for themselves. There is also the perfect parent pressure. Society places unrealistic expectations on us as parents. This results in parent-shaming  of  one another. This pressure often leads to the parent attaching status to the success of our children. If our child finds success in something, we feel its a direct result of our parenting. And vice versa,  if our children make mistakes, it reflects poorly on our parenting. 

But parenting isn’t the only reason for a lack of executive functioning and social emotional skills in our youth.  This is coupled with the technology advancements created over the last two decades. We are using technology (phones, ipads, computers, etc) to help us function at a faster rate, often using it as a crutch to help us get through the day at times. We rely on technology so much to function, that we, at times, have no idea what we would do without it. This results in getting so wrapped up in using it, that it then takes away from the connections we make with those around us. Parents are now modeling being stuck to a screen which is cutting down on the time they spend actively engaged with their children. With the rise in social media, our youth are now disengaged from connecting with their families and each other. This lack of connection amongst humans is showing a larger need for the deliberate practice and teaching of social emotional skills. These skills previously were a part of normal human interaction, but these days many children don’t know how to relate to one another, especially when collaborating and communicating. 

There are more reasons besides parenting and technology for this lack of executive functioning skills and social emotional skills. But these two are larger reasons and they are creating unique challenges for our children. Our kids are growing up in a society that is very different from the one we grew up in. And their childhood is not matching the real world they get let into at 18 years old.  For example, due to parenting differences and technology, our kids are growing up in a society that feels they all deserve a participation trophy. They should be rewarded for simply being themselves, not for a job well done. In soccer, instead of making a team or being cut, they will just add another team in an age group. Our efforts, although valiant and designed to create equity and inclusion, are creating a society for our kids that does not match the society they will get a job in someday. This disconnect ends up creating massive mental health issues for them. 

Now we aren’t saying that they can’t function, but much of our youth are lacking a whole skill set that we once had.  Executive Functioning Skills are defined as, the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. This skill set helps to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses, according to the Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University. 

Social Emotional Skills are defined as the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. 

Both of these skill sets fall under Mental Skills and they both surround the concept of connection. Connection to the sport, and connection to each other as teammates, coaches and players. They are skills needed to succeed in all aspects of society. Sports can often be considered a metaphor for life. And players get the chance to learn these skills through competition, team play and individual performance. When children/teens' executive function is working smoothly and expectations are developmentally appropriate, they develop a flexibility of thinking that supports follow-through or the acquisition of the skill. When EF is delayed or impaired, children/teens are more likely to fail at, or miss, our message. Additionally, they are then more likely to function out of their fight-or-flight response because the inability to meet the expectation of someone you want to please increases stress, leading to even less function in the prefrontal cortex and a sense of disconnection.

Through deliberate and consistent practice on these skills our youth can regain connection to themselves, the sport and each other. They can improve upon their own self awareness, self regulation and control of their emotions and functioning habits. Yet it is imperative that we prioritize the practice of these skills since they are not fully being addressed in everyday life the way they might have years ago. We can’t continue to have high expectations of our children without providing them with these skill sets. If we continue to allow clubs and coaches and even parents sometimes to say, “try harder,” or “kids are all so soft these days,” we are going to continue to fail our youth. We must address the areas of development they need and differentiate our instruction to meet these new needs that may be foreign to us. This is already being addressed in schools across our country. Students are now being taught about social emotional learning and most educators are familiar with this issue. But the longer we go without addressing them in youth sports, the longer we will continue to have large mental health issues in our teens and young adults. 

So the real question is, at what point are the soccer clubs in America going to realize that this matters? At what point are they going to take it seriously? And at what point are they going to begin to teach whole player development with mental skills having an equal amount of practice time as the other pillars of sport?