Few competitors understand mental toughness to as high a degree as Steve Fraser does. A wrestler of somewhat limited athletic skills, he willed himself to make the 1984 Olympic team in the punishing Greco-Roman style of wrestling. With a relentless, pounding style of wrestling, he made the team by defeating two formidable foes, two of the best Greco-Roman wrestlers his weight class had ever seen, 1980 Olympian Mark Johnson and Mike Houck, who in 1985 would become a world champion himself.

After making the Olympic team, Fraser won five straight matches in Los Angeles to become the first American ever to win an Olympic medal in Greco-Roman wrestling. The key match in his march to the goId medal came in the quarterfinal round when he defeated two-time world champion Frank Andersson of Sweden. Fraser simply pummeled Anderson into submission, winning 4-1.

In 1997, while serving as Greco-Roman coach for USA Wrestling, the sport's national governing body, Fraser wrote a column in which he explained his viewpoint on what it takes to be a great performer, assessing the variables of talent, skill, and toughness.

When talking about talent we must realize that every wrestler alas talent; some have it big and some not so big. This is the great gift given to you by Mother Nature. Theoretically, talent defines the potential of your athletic achievement. The idea is, that if you are gifted, or a real "natural," you can be great. If you’re not gifted then nothing special can happen athletically.

I do not believe this theory. We've all seen wrestlers with limited talent become great performers. I consider myself one of those wrestlers that lack natural talent. We've also seen wrestlers with great talent never truly reaching their full potential.

Why?

Next, we look at the nature of skill. Whereas talent is a gift, skills are learned. The mechanics of running, jumping, shooting, hitting and kicking are skills. They are acquired through hard work, repetition and practice. Theoretically, skills affect achievement in wrestling in much the same way as talent does. If your skills are strong, you can be great! If your skills are weak, your potential is limited. Again, I think we've all seen some successful wrestlers with skills that were marginal to good at best. So how do wrestlers with no special talent and average-to-good mechanics become the best?

Talent and skill are important contributors to achievement in sport, but I don't think they are the most important factors. So many highly successful athletes exist today who are not gifted or have not achieved mechanical perfection. They are everywhere in every sport-golf, tennis, baseball, basketball, football, boxing, skating, hockey, soccer and wrestling. So what is the critical factor in wrestling achievement? It's called toughness!

What is toughness? Toughness is the ability to consistently perform at a high level no matter what the competitive circumstances are. In other words-no matter what happens, no matter what is thrown at you, no matter what adversity you are faced with-you will still be able to bring all your talent and skills to life on demand.

Toughness is being able to perform at your ideal competitive state of mind and body. It is simply the optimal state of physiological and psychological arousal for performing at your peak.

You are most likely to perform at your peak when you feel

confident,

relaxed and calm,

energized with positive emotion, challenged,

focused and alert,

automatic and instinctive, and ready for fun and enjoyment.

Toughness is learned. Make no mistake about it. Toughness has nothing to do with genetics. It is acquired the same way skills are. If you don't have it, it just means you haven't learned it yet. Anyone can learn it at any stage in his or her life.

Toughness is mental, physical and ultimately emotional. What you think and visualize, how you act, when and what you eat, the quantity and quality of your sleep and rest, and especially your physical conditioning level, can all have a great effect on your emotional state. Tough thinking, tough acting, fitness, proper rest and diet are prerequisites for feeling tough.

Your emotions control your ideal competitive state of being. Some emotions are empowering-freeing your talent and skill. Other emotions are disempowering and lock your potential out. Empowering emotions are those associated with challenge, drive, confidence, determination, positive fight, energy, spirit, persistence and fun. Disempowering emotions are those associated with feelings of fatigue, helplessness, insecurity, low energy, weakness, fear and confusion.

Learning to access empowering emotions during competition, especially in difficult situations, is the basis for learning to be a great fighter. That's what toughness is all about.

-printed with permission of Steve Fraser.

MOVING PAST SETBACKS

An essential form of mental toughness is the ability to deal with setbacks, which will occur in the career of any world-class athlete. A popular saying in the wrestling world goes like this:

Never been a horse can't be rode,

Never been a cowboy can't be throwed.

In other words, everyone is going to experience setbacks in his or her career. It's simply unavoidable. And the manner in which one deals with setbacks is critical. Some call it attitude.

"Attitude is the glue that brings all of the physical and mental training together. We live or die by attitude," said power lifting champion Steve Knight.

Attitude can also be defined by one's mental state of recovery after a bad experience. That, too, is an essential part of being able to perform well.