Strength and Conditioning for the Mind: Leveraging Character Strengths in Mental Skills Training

Mental performance remains a critical differentiator at the highest levels of competition for elite athletes. Traditionally viewed through the lens of psychological skills such as attentional focus, confidence, or emotion regulation, mental performance is also shaped by deeper, stable psychological traits, such as character strengths, which influence how athletes focus, sustain confidence, and manage emotions under pressure. Despite this, the intentional, deliberate, and specific identification, assessment, and development of character strengths has generally been ignored in athlete development processes at all levels.

While many mental performance consultants purport to adopt a strengths-based philosophy, they generally remain unaware of character strengths, and those who are familiar still tend to have a cursory knowledge of character strengths that is typically limited to the awareness of the VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) as an assessment tool (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Even the leading organization for sport psychology consultants and professionals, the Association of Applied Sport Psychology, makes no mention of character strengths and only high-level references to strengths-based assessments and interventions in its resource, The Essential Guide for Mental Performance Consultants. Additionally, when character is considered by many mental-performance consultants and team coaches, the focus often remains on vague, ambiguous terms like “good teammate,” “moral character,” or virtues rather than on well-defined, identifiable, measurable, and mutable character strengths that directly influence sport performance.

As positive personality traits that are fundamental to our identity to produce advantageous outcomes for both individuals and society, character strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) are a hidden, untapped resource for athletes. This article establishes a structured framework to systematically map character strengths to key mental skills to demonstrate their direct impact on performance.

Character Strengths and Their Role in Sport Performance

Athletes who consistently perform at high levels demonstrate strong mental skills, and character strengths can serve as key psychological assets to build these mental skills in performance settings. Interpersonal character strengths (including fairness, kindness, teamwork, humility, leadership, and forgiveness) foster supportive sports environments, enhance individual athletic ability, and boost overall team dynamics and effectiveness. For example, researchers found that the Australian Football League team with the highest-quality athlete leadership excelled in all indicators of team effectiveness, including a shared sense of purpose, commitment to team goals, confidence, and performance (Fransen et al., 2017).

Emotional character strengths (including social intelligence, humor, bravery, creativity, and perspective) allow athletes to navigate complex interactions, reduce training and competition stress, foster resilience, and provide strategic advantages. For example, researchers found that expert athletes scored significantly higher in creativity, particularly in divergent thinking flexibility and years of practice correlated with fluency, flexibility, and originality (Richard et al., 2017).

Restraint character strengths (including prudence, perseverance, self-regulation, judgment, and honesty) guide athletes to make judicious decisions, adhere to disciplined training regimens, and manage their emotional and physiological states. For example, elite Norwegian soccer players are more self-aware and willing to invest effort compared to their non-elite peers (Toering et al., 2009).

Theological character strengths (including zest, hope, gratitude, spirituality, and love) guide athletes to maintain high energy and enthusiasm, foster resilience and strategic goal pursuit, and cultivate a positive team environment. For example, hopeful athletes tend to exhibit greater psychological robustness due to the positive relationship between hope and mental skills like optimism (Woodman et al., 2009), which translate into better performance under pressure (Gustafsson & Skoog, 2012).

Intellectual character strengths (including appreciation of beauty and excellence, love of learning, and curiosity) drive athletes to continuously seek knowledge, embrace challenges, and find inspiration in their surroundings. Athletes often draw inspiration from the elegance of a well-executed play, the harmony of teamwork, or the awe-inspiring natural environments where many sports take place. This sense of awe and inspiration can enhance athletes’ focus, increase their motivation, and elevate their overall performance levels (Gonzalez et al., 2011).

Integrating Character Strengths into Mental Skills Training

Mental skills training (MST) has long been used to develop psychological competencies essential for athletic success, but traditional approaches often treat mental skills as isolated techniques rather than as an extension of an athlete’s inherent psychological strengths. For example, in goal setting, mental performance consultants historically utilize strategies that enhance self-awareness and personal ownership in the process, such as performance assessments or training journals. But how often does a mental performance consultant identify that an athlete has a lesser strength of perseverance and thus advise the athlete to engage in progressive goal-setting drills to reinforce long-term commitment? Instead, the focus is typically on establishing short, medium, and long-term goals and categorizing them into goal types. Even when mental performance consultants are aware of an athlete’s character strengths, many are unsure of how to use these inherent strengths in MST. Therefore, to maximize the effectiveness of MST, a structured process is needed to systematically align character strengths with key mental skills to create personalized and sustainable training interventions.

Here is a five-step process I propose:

Break down mental skills into their components. For example, confidence can generally be broken down into four psychological and behavioral components: self-efficacy (confidence in one’s ability to perform specific tasks), self-belief (a general sense of capability and competence), overcoming self-doubt (managing negative self-talk and limiting beliefs), and feedback integration (using constructive feedback to reinforce confidence).
Establish a structured, evidence-based or -inspired link between character strength(s) and mental-skills components. For example, bravery reinforces the self-belief component of motivation by supporting one’s ability to achieve desired outcomes, particularly in high-pressure or adverse situations.
Categorize each relationship as core, supporting, or interrelated. Core character strengths are essential to the competency’s functioning and directly contribute to its effectiveness. For example, bravery would be considered a core character strength of self-belief. Supporting character strengths enhance or facilitate the functioning of the competency, but are not strictly essential. For example, perspective would be considered a supporting character strength of overcoming self-doubt. Finally, interrelated character strengths overlap with other competencies or character strengths and contribute indirectly or situationally. For example, humility would be considered an interrelated character strength of feedback integration.
Reconstruct mental skills competencies to aggregate the character strength relationships from the component level back to the broader mental skills competency level. While deconstructing each competency into its underlying psychological and behavioral components is essential for precision, this level of granularity is not always practical for application in MST and intervention design. Reconstruction synthesizes these relationships into a cohesive, high-level framework that is more functional for mental-performance consultants. When reconstructed, we find bravery, hope, and self-regulation as core character strengths of the confidence competency; perspective, gratitude, and love as supporting character strengths; and humility and leadership as interrelated character strengths.
Identify the optimal character strengths to develop mental skills. Because not all character strengths contribute equally to a given skill, practitioners may elect to adopt a scoring methodology (e.g., utilizing the core, supporting, and interrelated categories to establish relationship strength scores) to rank those character strengths within a competency or across all skills. For example, self-regulation appears to be a core strength of most mental skills competencies and therefore may garner additional attention for development. Practitioners may also analyze a client’s signature and lesser strengths to identify mental skills for focused development. Even better, practitioners may adopt the more generalized and bespoke approaches simultaneously.

By establishing the relationship between character strengths and relevant mental skills, mental performance consultants are positioned with a workable starting point for character-strength development to promote more effective MST.

Practical Applications for Mental Performance Consultants and Coaches

Rather than relying on standardized MST interventions such as mental rehearsal, a strengths-based approach ensures that training aligns with an athlete’s inherent psychological assets. It reinforces existing strengths and addresses areas for growth. To tailor interventions, effective MST begins with an accurate assessment of an athlete’s character strengths. Without this step, MST risks applying generic strategies or interventions that may not resonate with the athlete’s inherent strengths and natural tendencies. Such strategies may lead to inconsistent engagement and effectiveness.

One of the most widely used tools for character strengths identification is the VIA-IS, which helps to categorize character strengths that are already prominently exhibited or may need further refinement to enhance sport performance. However, as self-reported data alone is likely insufficient (e.g., many athletes do not want or are not willing to admit they are not brave, perseverant, or a team player in such high-stakes situations), observational methods and coach feedback, such as strengths-spotting, can play a crucial role in contextualizing character strengths within actual training and competition environments. These formal and informal assessments combined allow practitioners to identify character strengths ripe for development and link them to the specific mental skills they can support.

Once an athlete’s character strengths profile is established, targeted MST exercises can be designed to enhance key mental skills through a strengths-based approach. For example, an athlete who needs to improve goal-directedness as part of their motivation mental skill can benefit from interventions that strengthen key character strengths that support structured planning and adaptability, such as judgment and perspective.

To the extent possible, strengths-based MST should be embedded into daily training routines rather than treated as a separate component of preparation. Coaches and practitioners can integrate MST exercises into technical and tactical sessions to ensure that character strength development occurs in its most applicable environment as opposed to a classroom or film room setting. Tracking athlete progress is also essential for refining MST strategies over time.

Character strengths are a critical yet often overlooked component of athlete development that offer a structured, evidence-based approach to enhancing MST. While traditional MST focuses on isolated psychological techniques, a strengths-based framework aligns interventions with an athlete’s inherent psychological assets. Importantly, MST and performance psychology extends beyond sport, with applications in other high-stakes environments such as performing arts, tactical operations, and corporate leadership. By integrating character strengths into MST, mental performance consultants can develop more effective personalized, sustainable training strategies that enhance performance whether on the playing field or in the boardroom.

For those interested in exploring the integration of character strengths into mental skills training, athlete development, or talent identification programs in more detail, please review Beyond Just a Model Teammate: A New Framework to Leverage Character Strengths in Talent Identification and Athlete Development or contact me at justin@elite-mynd.com.

References

Fransen, K., Haslam, S. A., Mallett, C. J., Steffens, N. K., Peters, K., & Boen, F. (2017). Is perceived athlete leadership quality related to team effectiveness? A comparison of three professional sports teams. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 20(8), 800–806.

Gonzalez, S. P., Metzler, J. N., & Newton, M. (2011). The influence of a simulated ‘pep talk’ on athlete inspiration, situational motivation, and emotion. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 6(3), 445–459. https://doi.org/10.1260/1747-9541.6.3.445

Gustafsson, H., & Skoog, T. (2012). The mediational role of perceived stress in the relation between optimism and burnout in competitive athletes. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 25(2), 183–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2011.594045

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. American Psychological Association.

Richard, V., Abdulla, A. M., & Runco, M. (2017). Influence of skill level, experience, hours of training, and other sport participation on the creativity of elite athletes. Journal of Genius and Eminence, 2(1), 65–76. https://doi.org/10.18536/jge.2017.04.02.01.07

Toering, T. T., Elferink-Gemser, M. T., Jordet, G., & Visscher, C. (2009). Self-regulation and performance level of elite and non-elite youth soccer players. Journal of Sports Sciences, 27(14), 1509–1517. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410903369919

Woodman, T., Davis, P. A., Hardy, L., Callow, N., Glasscock, I., & Yuill-Proctor, J. (2009). Emotions and sport performance: An exploration of happiness, hope, and anger. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 31(2), 169–188. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.31.2.169

About the author | Justin M. Rindos is the founder of ELITE MYND Performance LLC which specializes in mental performance coaching for elite athletes. With a distinguished background as a private equity executive and lifelong elite competitive athlete, Justin focuses on integrating character strengths and other positive psychology principles with mental skills training to enhance athletic performance. Prior to founding ELITE MYND, Justin held various leadership roles at a global private equity firm whilst pioneering industry innovations globally. He holds a BA from Fairfield University, a JD from Quinnipiac University School of Law, a LLM from New York University School of Law, and a MAPP from University of Pennsylvania. Justin is also admitted as an attorney in New York. In his free time, Justin competes in hybrid endurance events and enjoys sharing experiences with his two children.