Mental Toughness in Water Skiers

[Skiwoodgate]

Hello Ballers! My name is Michael Woodgate, and I am an Exercise Science and Sport Management graduate student at the University of Louisiana Monroe. The purpose of this post is to give you the opportunity to participate in a research study designed to examine mental toughness in water skiers. To participate, you only need to click on the link below and complete the short survey totaling 30 items that will take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Data collected during this study will contribute to research and an increased understanding of the affect mental toughness has on the performance and participation characteristics of water skiers. The results of this study may be used in a peer-reviewed publication and/or presentation at a professional conference.

 

If you are interested in participating, please click the link below. You can discontinue the survey at any time. The first page of the survey includes the informed consent and gives more detail about the study. Once you have read the informed consent, you can click the “ ok” stating that you have read, understand and agree to give consent, and click onto the next page to participate. If after reading the informed consent, you decide not to participate in the study, just exit this original link.

 

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/X32CPX3

 

Your participation in this short survey will really help me with my research in water skiing. There is a severe lack of current literature in our sport and I hope to be able to publish some good quality studies in the near future!

 

[Skiwoodgate]

31 people have replied off BOS already, thank you people! Every response will help me immensely and it will only take you 5-10 minutes to complete!

[MuskokaKy]

keep us posted on what are and what you do with the results :).

 

took no more than 5 minutes.

[Skiwoodgate]

I most certainly will! Thank you!

[RazorRoss3]

Are you worried that as a result advertising your study as looking at mental toughness in waterskiing, that a male dominated sport will bias your results upward both from a subconscious desire to claim that waterskiers are better than non-waterskiers and from a bunch of dudes claiming to be the toughest mentally tough tough guy around?

[Skiwoodgate]

Hey, let me address your points. Its not about a subconscious desire to claim that water skiers are better than non water-skiers, as non-waterskier are not going eligible to participate in the study. The study is into water skiers and I hope I will be able to distinguish both overall mental toughness and sub scales of mental toughness with the level one participates, amongst a number of other things.

 

I will certainly be looking at differences in results from males and females, but "one being more mentally tough than the other" is not the purpose of the study at all. Although people may lean towards trying to "give a mentally tough" answer in the survey, it's very difficult for one to claim to be more mentally tough than another when the survey responses are anonymous.

 

As with all studies, there are certainly limitations but the truth is to a large extent I have no idea what I am going to find here. It is a largely exploratory study and a masters level thesis that will hopefully be publishable and at least be a baseline into further study with sport psychology and water skiing. There is currently next to no current published literature in any sport psychology field out there in our sport, and very very limited physiological studies in our sport. Something that I am interested in changing.

 

Appreciate your thoughts.

[Than_Bogan]

Cool questions. Will be interesting to see what observations you can make!

[The_MS]

We are not mentally tough, just mentally stupid. Pay all that money and invest all that time so we can go down at 3@35 at nationals and finish 35th.

Oh and you get to think about it while walking back to the dock from opposite side of the lake through snakes and gators.

Sign me up

[MuskokaKy]

@The_MS ; hilarious rant! you always add that fun element to a thread!

[RazorRoss3]

@The_MS I think you just need to learn how to ski better you big baby. Maybe @Thager would agree to give you some coaching in exchange for a few beers

[NikolG]

Cool! Shared on Bell Acqua Lake FB.

[The_MS]

I can’t tell you how many times I have taken that slow walk back to the dock and thinking what a stupid sport I’m involved in and swear I won’t go back. (Until the second round)

 

[jhughes]

Yeah, I think the big spoiler alert is that mental toughness is pretty rare in this sport, myself included. We blame everything but ourselves, we're picky, we're gear addicts, we're out of shape, and we train with very little discipline or structure most of the time. You'll see those with mental toughness on the podiums with few exceptions.

[Buxrus]

@Skiwoodgate, psychological dx for water skiers: that’s pretty easy, addictive behavior, bit of personality dysorder with mild moderate or severe narcissism.

[MISkier]

After taking the survey, I realize how mentally tough I am not.

 

Note my tag line on this very forum.

[Skiwoodgate]

Although maybe we are mentally tougher than we think, sticking with the sport rather than throwing the ski in the shed and taking up golf? haha. I think it is interesting, I certainly think I could distinguish a bunch of the more mentally tough pros over some of the lesser, although I am really quite interested in seeing what I will find with peoples mental toughness at different competitive levels and how it effects performance and participation habits. I can guess that water skiers are pretty committed to what they do, despite their competitive level. I can guess that there will be quite a number that will get frustrated when they ski bad (I've spent way too much time in the boat at ski school, I don't need a survey to confirm this). I can guess water skiers don't give up particularly easily. Lets see, this will be interesting!

 

Thank you all for your participation, I really appreciate it and if you can share it with your friends and ski pals I wish PB's on everybody this upcoming season!

[mikegile]

Is determined to bang your head against the wall over and over the same thing as mental toughness?

 

@Skiwoodgate I am hoping this survey will give you info to fix our mental weakness......

[Than_Bogan]

Most phrases that include the word "mental" describe me -- both for good and bad.

 

Most phrases that include the word "toughness" do not describe me at all!

 

So "mental toughness" is a very mixed bag for me.

[6balls]

I've seen plenty of toughness, plenty of fragility, plenty of entitlement. Cross section of humanity common at a high level across any activity. People that are REALLY into any one thing tend to be a little quirky. I don't think our sport is unique in that regard.

[thager]

@RazorRoss3 Huh?

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@The_MS yes you are just mentally stupid. That's about the most accurate statement this board has seen in a long time.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

@Skiwoodgate , Michael, great ideas. However I don’t think the questions in the survey will get anywhere close to answering “mental toughness”.

 

For background, I’m a chronologically gifted skier who competed semi-professionally many years ago. My answers back then would have been significantly different from where I am today. That is a major missing feature in your questions/rationale. The response from someone who skis for enjoyment will be significantly different from someone who is committed to competition – you need do delineate between those for any issues of “toughness”.

 

I agree there is a dearth of information on this subject and know this is not a simple endeavor, so I hope you continue to pursue it.

 

Some suggestions to consider toward the “mental toughness” question:

 

Do you perform better or worse in high pressure situations vs practice?

If you do perform well under pressure, how long did it take to perform in those situations?

How do you handle marginally dangerous conditions? i.e. pro jumpers in a 20mph tail wind?

How do you handle situations where your sponsorships are on the line? i.e. you need to place in the top 5 to stay on your sponsor’s “team” and keep the $$ coming.

How do you handle high pressure situations? i.e you are the top seed at Nationals and you need to beat your PB by 1 buoy to win?

 

You may want to sit down with the some of the ULM skiers and pick their brains. For the most part they are no slouches.

 

If you really want to find out mental toughness, I suggest thinking in terms of what separates Sammy Duvall / Freddy Krueger from the other jumpers, or Bob LaPoint / Andy Mapple from the rest of the pack. (Sorry for showing my age) Those are the athletes that consistently performed under pressure and should be the case studies for “mental toughness”. JMO.

 

[Skiwoodgate]

Hello @Bruce_Butterfield I expect the response for someone skis for enjoyment to be significantly different from someone who is committed to completion, that is one of my hypotheses, and something that can be seen across sports in general. Confirming this hypotheses will merely be confirmatory to previous studies conducted across other sport. I did consider writing something about "fill in today, or fill in in your prime" but figured to leave it out as that would confuse demographic questions immensely which will be used to compare to SMTQ scores, and I also figured the "older" skiers, (John Battleday messaged me saying exactly this) would fill the SMTQ out as if they were in their prime. This is certainly a limitation, one that I have considered but figured not to worry too much about as I think trying to address it would ultimately introduce more error into the data.

 

The idea that this survey will answer "mental toughness" is not something I am looking for, as such. What even is mental toughness exactly? You look at literature and there are many definitions. The questions used in my questionnaire have been taken from the SMTQ (Sheard, Golby & Van Wersh, 2009) which is a well respected mental toughness questionnaire that has been used through a lot of literature. Of course there are plenty of other MT questionnaires also, all of which use certain and different sub scales of mental toughness to give an overall picture of mental toughness. I do hope however to be able to see some significant relationships with the data and someones "competitive standard", for example. This is an exploratory study in the large part, I hope it will at least be good enough to open the door for further research in the area.

 

Case study wise I totally agree, and those athletes were some that I were alluding to in my previous post. We certainly have a number of names in our sport that one could clearly see are "mentally tough" and have that edge over the rest of the pack, and mental toughness is certainly a part of any athletes success.

 

Thank you for your constructive response.

[ALPJr]

Good survey. Only suggestion is to add a category in between novice and regional tournaments in the question regarding what level you participate in, such as C and States which comprise most of the tournaments in the east region. Thanks

[JackQ]

Bruce Butterfield nailed it. For those who compete, do you do as well, better, or worse at major events, Regional, Nationals or under adverse conditions?

 

I do know some non mentally tough skiers, that would have an average score nearly a pass better than mine, but at Regionals, Nationals or hopefully poor conditions, I would out ski them 9 out of 10 times. Was I mentally though or did they cave it to the pressure, more of the latter.

[Skiwoodgate]

I did actually consider thinking about asking a question about performance at certain events however I realized I think the data would be illegitimate. A major event for you, may not be a major event for me, how do we define the "major events" for someone? How do deem the level where performance is considered "good" or "bad"? Mental toughness is certainly going to effect placements at tournaments, its part of "the whole package" that the elite athletes exhibit. Although I am sure then even if I was to look at a series of specific case study interviews in the future, how one may perceive their mental toughness may not be how the public perceive it.

 

I am sure I will finish this study with more questions than answers, but I'm fine with that!

[Skiwoodgate]

Doing a great job getting responses with this survey, thank you everyone that has participated. I will keep it open until next weekend. If you haven't had a chance to fill it please take 5 minutes of your time and fill it in, I really appreciate it and it will help the veracity of conclusions the study comes to with more survey responses. Thanks! https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/X32CPX

 

[NorthIdahoLPO]

Good luck! Just completed. Here’s a bump for you.

[DW]

Are you able to discern, or do you care, that a survey is included from athletes that may compete successfully in other sports (and are 'mentally tough') and also water ski either for fun or run tournaments either for fun or to win? Basically for them waterskiing may not be the primary sport nor the one that requires peak mental toughness.

[Horton]

got it

[6balls]

@DW no kidding.

 

All competitive pursuits at a high level are made up mostly of mentally tough individuals. In particular, anything that takes really hard work and exceptional personal sacrifice.

 

My guess is most skiers on this forum are mentally tough, and good at lots of other stuff for the same reason. There is a mighty lot of talent around here, and lots of blood, sweat and tears to account for it.

[BCM]

@Skiwoodgate - as a research scientist who works in a field that people often care deeply about, I commend your approach and ability to address questions. What you are doing is not easy. From what I have seen, good job, and good luck. When you publish, be sure to post a link to the paper.

 

If someone wanted to read up on the mental toughness literature, do you have a list of top 5 or so papers? I'm thinking peer reviewed and preferably open access. I'm curious, this topic is way outside my field, and the weather here is pretty bad for the foreseeable future. Thanks.

[RichardDoane]

After completing the survey, it makes me realize how long I’ve been enjoying the sport of competitive water skiing.

[matthewbrown]

Mental Toughness Formula= (The amount of times you dream about overcoming all obstacles in your path and relish the challenges in front of you) / (the amount of times you fear failing, and dread trying to overcome any obstacles)

[Horton]

@matthewbrown that reads like a life lesson to me

[Skiwoodgate]

@DW absolutely athletes may compete in other sports and water skiing may not be their primary. This is certainly a limitation that must be recognized in conclusions. I hope the survey research will discern mental toughness and competitive standard, alongside a couple of other things. The survey did ask a question about ones competitive standard in water skiing which will help me understand responses from the recreational to amateur participant.

 

[Skiwoodgate]

@BCM thank you for your words. I have read a lot of literature on mental toughness, and have had to base my study around previous study in other sports due to the lack of literature in water skiing. Some of the particularly interesting studies to me are listed below. All of these I have been able to access through either google scholar or my library database.

 

Jemmy, S., & Easvaradoss, V. (2018). Mental Toughness and Positivity as Predictors of Performance Strategies Used Among Competing Athletes. International Journal of Sports Sciences & Fitness, 8(2), 98-119.

 

Chen, M. A., & Cheesman, D. J. (2013). Mental Toughness of Mixed Martial Arts Athletes at Different Levels of Competition. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 116(3), 905-917

 

Biglari, S., Sanatkaran, A., Bahari, S. M., & Montazeri, M. (2015). The Comparison of Team and Individual Male Athletes, Mental Toughness at Different Levels of Skills. International Journal of Basic Sciences and Applied Research, 4(2), 127-132.

 

Slimani, M., Miarka, B., Briki, W., & Cheour, F. (2016, June 7). Comparison of Mental Toughness and Power Test Performances in High-Level Kickboxers by Competitive Success. Asian Journal of Sports Medicine, 7(2), e30840.

 

Chen, M. A., & Cheesman, D. J. (2013). Mental Toughness of Mixed Martial Arts Athletes at Different Levels of Competition. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 116(3), 905-917.