mental toughness

Psychological variables that affect mental health are divided into useful and harmful variables. Useful variables are beneficial for improving mental health and quality of life, and increasing well-being, for instance, happiness, calmness, vigor, and mental toughness. Harmful variables reduce mental health, quality, and enjoyment of life, for example, negative mood states, anxiety, and burnout. This study aimed to predict psychological burnout based on mood states and mental toughness of elite athletes with physical disabilities. Participants have included 150 athletes with physical disabilities (77women; 73men) competing at national or international Paralympic sports teams (mean age=42.34 ±7.44y, mean experience=8.38 ± 3.19 y) that were selected in the random method. Participants accomplished the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire, the 32-item Brunel Mood Scale, and the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis showed that happiness (moderate negative power, 51%), vigor (weak negative power, 28%), fatigue (weak positive power, 22%), mental toughness (medium negative power, 57%), and confidence (weak negative power, 29%) were able to predict the total burnout of the athletes with disabilities. These findings are essential for psychologists since developing and increasing the useful variables and inhibiting or decreasing the harmful variables for mental health can prevent sports burnout.

Objective: Bodybuilding has attracted a lot of people in recent years, but despite the popularity of using unauthorized and steroid drugs, it has caused many problems for athletes. The purpose of the present study was therefore to compare mental toughness and sense of coherence in natural and steroid bodybuilders. Method: This study was a descriptive and causal-comparative study. The statistical population consisted of all natural and steroid bodybuilders in Rasht in 2019 from 120 individuals (60 natural bodybuilders and 60 steroid bodybuilders) they were selected purposefully and included questionnaires on sport mental toughness Sheard, Golby & Van Wersch (2009) and Sense of coherence Antonovsky (1993) responded. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance by SPSS 24 software. Results: The findings of this study showed that there was a significant difference between the components of mental toughness and sense of coherence in the two groups (P<0.01). Natural bodybuilders had higher levels of Confidence (24.93, P<0.001), Constancy (15.60, P<0.006), Control (14.43, P<0.001), and sense of coherence (21.88, P<0.001) compared to steroid bodybuilders. Discussion: The results obtained from this research show that the abuse of steroid drugs has a significant impact on the psychological and physical aspects of bodybuilders. For this purpose, it is necessary to prevent possible injuries by providing proper information and providing psychological services to professional athletes.

Background: Football players, in their pursuit of optimal physical and mental performance, frequently employ various recovery techniques. Among these, sleep emerges as a consistently highlighted and crucial element in athletes’ physical and cognitive performance.  Aim: This study aimed to investigate the correlation between sleep quality and mental toughness (MT), while concurrently exploring the relationship between MT and different football positions.Materials and Methods: A total of 473 Iranian football players, comprising 287 males and 186 females, were selected through a simple random sampling method by completing two questionnaires that assessed their sleep quality (PSQI) and MT (SMTQ-14).Results: The findings showed that athletes with higher subjective sleep quality and longer sleep duration demonstrated high levels of MT. Moreover, defenders and attackers exhibited the highest levels of MT compared to other playing positions. Notably, male football players reported higher sleep quality and MT compared to their female counterparts.Conclusion: This study focused on the relationship between sleep quality and MT among football players. The study revealed that both male and female football players with better sleep quality and longer sleep duration had higher MT, with males scoring higher overall. Moreover, defenders regardless of gender, exhibited the strongest MT.