How to Test Your Team's Mental Toughness from Day 1!

🚀 Wondering how to build mental toughness in your team from the very first day? Learn how to push your team and build resilience with challenges that actually work! 👉 Grab the free training here → https://coachfreetraining.com
 
I'm Coach Bre – a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach with 4 state championships. After over 14 years of coaching high school athletes, I’ve seen how mental training can make or break a season. In this episode, I’m sharing how the Earn the Right system, a series of challenges that build mental toughness helps your athletes earn their success!
 
🎯 You’ll learn:
 ✅ How Earn the Right challenges your athletes mentally and physically
 ✅ How ball control drills to build mental toughness
 ✅ How to create a program where everything is earned, not given
 ✅ Why mental training should be part of your player evaluation process
 ✅ How to test player impact through mental reps and tough situations
 
Whether you're organizing tryouts, setting and communicating expectations, or helping your athletes face pressure, these tips are designed to improve mental performance and elevate your team's peak performance.
 
🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction and Background
00:31 What is 'Earn the Right'?
01:13 Mental Toughness and Training Strategies
02:56 Detailed Breakdown of Challenges
04:43 Advanced Drills and Team Coordination
07:51 Conclusion and Additional Resources
 
📢 Coaches – comment below: What challenges do you use to test mental toughness in your athletes? 👇
 
📌 Build your team’s mental game confidently:
 🔹 Grab our in-depth FREE training → https://coachfreetraining.com
 🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
 🔹 Follow us on TikTok→ @coachhergame
 
🔔 Subscribe for More → Never miss an episode of Coach Her Game!

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

All right, coach. This was a highly requested video about what I do during the first week of my high school volleyball season. I've been a high school volleyball coach for the past 14 years, won four state championships as a coach, and I've been doing the same thing every season. During the first week of our season, I talked about it on TikTok, it's called Earn the Right, and I had so many coaches saying like, I wanna, what do, what do you do for earn the right, how do I do it? And so I thought I would just create a video where I. Take you behind the scenes of my first week of the season and what earn the right is. So let's get into it. Earn the right, first of all, is basically a series of challenges. I have six that allows my athletes to be uncomfortable physically, mentally, as a team. I put them in challenging situations that they have to work their way through, and as they complete challenges, they earn gear. So in our program, we give out like practice shirts, jerseys, backpacks, jackets, and I really want athletes. To earn those things. It's a value of our program that everything is earned not given and so this is a way to practice that. Now a thing about earn the right, I actually didn't come up with it. My college volleyball coach, shout out to Diane, she had us do earn the right every season in college, and I have modified it to fit our high school purposes. But the other reason why I love it is not only do they have to earn things, but they also get. Uncomfortable and challenge, which is what we want practice to be. We don't want our athletes facing the most mentally tough parts of their training in a competition when the game is on the line and they're serving for, um, you know, game point in a winner to state loser out situation. By the way, I've been there and we've crumbled too many times. So that's why I incorporate mental training into my program. Using really simple strategies and earn the right is one of the ways that I can test the mental toughness of my team and test the strategies that I've given them. So if you wanna learn the specific strategies that I give my team when it comes to mental strength and toughness, things like the snapback routine. Self-talk, how to come back from mistakes faster, how to deal with pressure, all that. Go to my free training, it's at coach free training.com, and I break it all down for you there. But earn the right is a way for me to test the mental toughness of my team. Are they actually using their reset words? Are they actually coming back from their mistakes? Because in earn the right, they. Make a lot of mistakes. So I intentionally put them in this situation that's challenging for them mentally, individually, but also as a team. So they get into, you know, these, these challenges where they have to work together as a team. And it's frustrating and it's easy to get mad at your teammates because you're trying to accomplish this goal and maybe somebody keeps messing up. Like how do you show up as a teammate in that situation? Sound familiar by the way, because some of you have, you know, situations that happen on the court or the field where like teammates are snapping at each other. I would rather do that in practice than in an actual game when we know it's gonna happen when they, they're like, we've already done it. We've already been through this. We know how to respond so we're in the right. Just gives a really great way to do that. So. What do we actually do? This is volleyball. You can apply it to whatever sport that you coach. Just think of like what your values are, what you wanna emphasize, and also what skills are important at the beginning of a season. So the other great thing about earn the right is that it starts with individual, small or individual drills around ball control, and then it leads up to six on six. Okay. So it progresses there. That's the other thing is that. And they have to earn the right to practice as a team. They have to nail the fundamentals first. We've gotta be really good at passing. We've gotta be really good at serve, receive, and free ball passing before we can go fast and, you know, start running an, uh, an offense and things like that. So we start small. So the first challenge that I have them do is forearm pass to themselves. For three minutes in a row. Okay, sounds simple, but in my team, um, they all have to be able to complete it at the same time. So they start the timer, everybody starts passing to themselves. If anyone drops the ball, we go back down to zero, okay? And we start over. So they keep doing it until they can all cross that finish line at three minutes, um, with nobody dropping the ball. Then we move on to setting. So same idea, but setting overhead, passing for two minutes in a row. Then we move on to shuttles. So we start to get to small group that was all individual. When we get through that, we go to small groups. So I have, um, and on my team of 12, I create three teams of four. So shuttles are, they're um, kinda split on either side of the net, two people on one side, two people on the other. And then they start just by passing. So they pass over the net and then they run to the back of the line. So they run under the net and to the back of the line, and then they pass it over the net. So it's kind of fatiguing, right? They have to like run and. Go to the end of the line and things like that. They have to get, um, 20 forearm passes in their group, then 20 sets, then 20 passes to themselves, set over the net, and then they go down to 16, pass themselves or set to themselves and down ball over the net too. Their team on the other side, that's where things start to get a little hairy because if they mess up at any point in this sequence, they go back down to passing. They gotta start at the beginning. So they do that and then we get to, um, two on two. So. And they get to the end of that, it's past set, hit over the net. So they're trying to control that ball and each person needs to get three swings. Okay. And I want it to be a nice controlled swing. It doesn't have to be full out, but I don't want'em to, you know, just down ball it or just go easy. I want them to have good mechanics form. So once they get through that, then they're done with. With that piece of it, and they complete it as a shuttle group. They don't have to have like all three shuttle groups complete at the same time or anything like that. They're now just with, within their small group. This one can get frustrating, um, because it includes a lot of ball control. Um, you know, there's, there might be somebody who's a little bit weaker when it comes to ball control and it, you know, they're the one that keeps kinda messing up, so they really have to work together. Okay. That is challenge three. Challenge four is free ball passing. So we use our free ball system. We do like kind of a butterfly drill to practice this, but they have to get a hundred perfect free ball passes in a row. And I know you're like, oh, that sounds like a lot. But honestly, free ball passing is like, we've gotta be good at it. The caveat here is I'm actually looking at their form versus their outcome. Okay. So I'm looking at do they have. Um, uh, wrist and hands together, straight and simple platform. Do they face the ball and go to the, to the target? Are all those right? Are they calling mine? And if at any point, and I'm watching this, if any point they pass and I'm watching just one side of the net and they don't do it, I say no. And we start back over at zero. So they're also, I do have them, I guess I take that back. I don't do it a hundred in a row, just a hundred. Sorry, free ball passes. And then after they do that, we go on to serve, receive, serving and passing. Most important, you know, skills in volleyball. So they have to get a hundred three, three, three passes, no, that's three is like in volleyball. That's perfect pass. Um, and it doesn't have to be in a row. They just have to get 103 passes. And so everyone rotates through, serve, receive, through the target, and through serving. And, um, if they pass a three, they get a point. If they pass a two, it's a wash. Just doesn't count for, not for anything, just we just move on. Um, however, if they pass a one or a zero. Then they're in the danger zone because if they do that again, if we get two ones or zeros in a row, then we go back down to zero. Also, if the server, um, misses her serve two times in a row, so whether it's the same person two times in a row or like I serve, and then the person next behind me serves. And they miss. Um, also we go back down to zero. Now they get benchmarked. So every 25 they get to lock that in. But that one typically takes the longest. And the last one is a six on six drill. So we call it bucket of balls. Again, this came from Diane, um, but I modified it a little bit. They have six balls in a bucket. They only have this, those six to complete this drill. It's timed. So we're in a six on six. We're practicing our defensive systems. And it's outside hitter versus outside hitter. So we set the outside every single time she has to swing and hit the ball over. Our defense has to dig it up, set the outside on the other side of the net, and that outside needs to hit over. So it's cooperative. We have to keep the ball alive for that full two minutes. After two minutes we go to the middles. Same thing. Then we go to the opposites, same thing, and then we go back, row attacks, same thing. Now if they drop the ball or mess up at any time in that, um, that we throw a new ball in, but they only have six balls, so only six chances to complete that full eight minutes. And that is on the right. Okay. It typically takes, we do tr tryouts for the first two days and then, um, it typically takes the next like three practices. To get through all of, earn the right, but the really great thing is that they get a ton of reps as well. This is not wasted time. They're getting individual reps, they're getting ball control reps, they're getting free wall passing reps serve receive reps, six on six defensive drills. They get it all. And I can give a ton of feedback as well as a coach. So it's very intentional, um, while also putting them in challenging situations that they have to work through. At the end, they feel like they've just accomplished, they've just won state. They're like, oh, that's amazing. Um, and so it was also a really cool way to start off your season so that my friends is earn the right, if you want more. Um, information on how you can build your team's mental game so that they can do challenges like this without breaking down and, you know, imploding on you. Then check out our free training@coachretraining.com. That's where I teach all of those skills. I'll see you there.