To effectively coach mental strength, it is not enough to understand what strong mental performance looks like. Just as important – and often overlooked – is learning to recognize when it’s missing. Just like diagnosing poor mechanics in a swing or noticing 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 chaos. And because these tools are invisible – unlike speed or height – it’s easy to misinterpret their absence. What looks like laziness, immaturity, or a bad attitude is often something much deeper: underdeveloped mental strength.
This misunderstanding leads to missed opportunities. When we label behavior as “drama” or “lack of effort,” we can punish or ignore it. But if we label it accurately – as an untrained mental skill
— we create space to coach it, just as we would coach passing form or footwork.
What mental struggle often looks like in volleyball athletes
Let’s take a closer look at the behaviors that typically reveal a lack of mental preparedness. These athletes are not broken or weak; they simply haven’t yet learned how to respond mentally when things get tough.
1. Exit after an error
Their attitude weakens, they stop talking, they shy away from the next part. Confidence decreases and effort seems to disappear.
2. Overreacting to criticism or referee calls
Some athletes seem overly sensitive – not because they are ‘soft’, but because they have not yet built up the emotional regulation to separate feedback from self-esteem.
3. Blaming others
When athletes deflect responsibility—by pointing fingers at teammates, complaining about conditions, or making excuses—they don’t know how to deal with their own performance gaps, so they push the discomfort outward.
4. Inconsistency
Hot-cold patterns are rarely about physical preparedness and are more often linked to mental fluctuations. Athletes who cannot regulate their mindset will always have performance gaps, no matter how technically skilled they are.
5. Lack of focus
You can see it in the exercise: eyes wander, effort decreases, withdrawal during team conversations. In the heat of competition, it seems that there are zoning issues or missing orders. Focus isn’t just a trait – it’s a trained ability to stay present. Without this, mental fatigue and distraction become the default under pressure.
6. Fear of failure
This often comes up as playing ‘safe’. They don’t take risks, they avoid making mistakes, and they limit their own potential just to avoid shame.
7. Low resilience
Some athletes seem to carry a bad moment with them all day or week. These athletes haven’t yet developed the mental “reset button” that helps strong performers remain steady no matter what just happened.
Change your coaching lens
As a coach, how you interpret this behavior is crucial. If you see them as flaws, you can become frustrated. If you see them as skills not yet learnedyou get the power to coach them.
Think about how you would react if a player had trouble with timing on a set or had inefficient footwork. You wouldn’t write them off. You diagnose the problem, break it down, teach it step by step and then build it up through reps. That same mentality applies to mental strength.
When athletes show signs of mental struggle, they are not showing you a character flaw; they give you insight into where they need training.
View more mental performance training.
Neurofuel is the JVA’s Preferred High Performance Mental Training Platform. JVA partners with NeuroFuel to help you build mentally strong athletes and teams. Find out how to get your team up and running here.
Neurofuel is a mental training platform designed to help athletes learn and train the mental techniques proven to help individuals perform to their potential more often when they matter most. Used by more than 1,200 teams and more than 23,000 athletes, Neurofuel supports athletes, coaches and teams in achieving a peak performance mindset and long-term personal growth. More information at www.neurofuelapp.com/
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