Even athletes with perfect mechanics can fall apart under pressure. They can forget routines, stop communicating, or start playing “not to lose” instead of going after the moment. Volleyball is a fast, emotional, momentum-driven sport. And so much of what determines success in tight games — or in long seasons — comes down to how athletes manage their minds.
How Mental Training Helps Athletes Perform
Mental training gives athletes practical tools to manage stress, pressure, and adversity. It helps them stay composed in chaos, bounce back after mistakes, and remain confident even when things go wrong.
Here’s what that looks like on the court:
1. Handling Pressure with Clarity
Athletes don’t just face physical fatigue — they face mental overload. Mental training helps them stay calm and clear-minded when the stakes are high.
2. Recovering Quickly from Mistakes
A shanked pass or a hitting error doesn’t have to define the next point — but only if an athlete has practiced how to mentally reset.
3. Staying Focused Through Fatigue or Frustration
When tired or annoyed, many athletes check out. Mental training teaches them how to stay present and stay in the game.
4. Playing with Trust, Not Fear
Athletes who fear failure often hesitate. Mental strength builds the courage to swing hard, take smart risks, and trust their preparation.
5. Showing Up Consistently, Regardless of Circumstances
Good athletes can play well when things are going well. Mentally trained athletes show up — with energy, focus, and poise — even when they’re tired, behind, or off their rhythm.
If Volleyball Is “90% Mental,” Why Are We Only Training the Physical?
Coaches often say, “Volleyball is 90% mental.” But most teams spend 99% of their training time on physical reps. That’s not because coaches don’t care — it’s usually because they don’t know how to train the mental side, or they’re unsure where to start.
The fact is, you don’t need to overhaul your entire practice plan.
Even small investments — a few minutes per day — in mental training can have an outsized impact on how your players compete, how they practice, and how they carry themselves.
Mental training helps athletes take the skills they’ve built in practice and actually use them under pressure. And that’s the difference between a player who “knows what to do” and one who actually does it when it counts.
Beyond the Court: Mental Skills for Life
The value of mental training doesn’t end when the match does. These skills carry over into real life, giving athletes a strong foundation for whatever comes next — in school, work, and relationships.
Athletes who practice mental skills learn how to:
- Manage stress
- Set and follow through on goals
- Regulate emotions under pressure
- Build real, lasting self-confidence
- Develop resilience when life throws setbacks
For most coaches, this is a big deal – especially the ones that aren’t just trying to build great athletes but are also hoping to have a positive impact on the lives of the athletes they work with.
To coach mental strength effectively, it’s not enough to understand what strong mental performance looks like. Equally important — and often overlooked — is learning how to recognize when it’s missing. Just like diagnosing poor mechanics in a swing or spotting gaps in defensive positioning, identifying signs of mental struggle allows you to coach with greater clarity, precision, and compassion.
Many athletes enter your gym or program without the tools to manage adversity, recover from mistakes, or stay locked in through chaos. And because those tools are invisible — unlike speed or height — it’s easy to misinterpret their absence. What might look like laziness, immaturity, or a bad attitude is often something much deeper: underdeveloped mental strength.
This misunderstanding leads to missed opportunities. If we label behavior as “drama” or “lack of effort,” we might punish or ignore it. But if we label it accurately — as an untrained mental skill
— we create space to coach it, just like we would coach passing form or footwork.
What Mental Struggles Often Look Like in Volleyball Athletes
Let’s look more closely at the behaviors that typically reveal a lack of mental readiness. These athletes aren’t broken or weak — they simply haven’t yet learned how to respond mentally when things get hard.
1. Shutting Down After a Mistake
Their posture drops, they stop talking, they shy away from the next play. Confidence deflates, and effort seems to disappear.
2. Overreacting to Criticism or Referee Calls
Some athletes appear overly sensitive — not because they’re “soft,” but because they haven’t yet built the emotional regulation to separate feedback from self-worth.
3. Blaming Others
When athletes deflect responsibility — pointing fingers at teammates, complaining about the conditions, or making excuses — they don’t know how to sit with their own performance gaps, so they shift the discomfort outward.
4. Inconsistency
Hot-cold patterns are rarely about physical readiness and more often tied to mental fluctuations. Athletes who can’t regulate their mindset will always have performance gaps, no matter how skilled they are technically.
5. Lack of Focus
You see it in the drill line — eyes wandering, effort dipping, disengagement during team talks. In the heat of competition, it looks like zoning out or missing assignments. Focus isn’t just a trait — it’s a trained ability to stay present. Without it, mental fatigue and distraction become the default under pressure.
6. Fear of Failure
This often shows up as “safe” play. They don’t take risks, they avoid making mistakes, and they limit their own potential just to avoid embarrassment.
7. Low Resilience
Some athletes seem to carry one bad moment for an entire day — or week. These athletes haven’t yet developed the mental “reset button” that helps strong performers stay steady regardless of what just happened.
Shift Your Coaching Lens
As a coach, how you interpret these behaviors is critical. If you see them as flaws, you may become frustrated. If you see them as skills not yet learned, you become empowered to coach them.
Think about how you would respond if a player struggled with timing on a set or had inefficient footwork. You wouldn’t write them off. You’d diagnose the issue, break it down, teach it step by step, and then build it through reps. That same mindset applies to mental strength.
When athletes display signs of mental struggle, they’re not showing you a character defect — they’re giving your insight into where they need training.
ARIZONA SAGUAROS VOLLEYBALL CLUB 