Mental toughness is a very important part of life. To be able to complete a task that needs to be done, no matter what your body or your mind is telling you is tough. But once your good at it, nothing can stop you from getting what you want. So how do you get good at it?

People who understand it actually welcome adversity with open arms, because they know that every time something difficult comes up, if they can embrace that and be positive about it, it is a growth opportunity. Those events - handling the unpleasant or the unexpected -- develop mental toughness.

And it's not just toughness in your training. Danni Roche tells her story about chips (one of her 'favorite foods in the world') - how giving them up became a mental issue for her. I gave up chocolate for a period of time, I remember. Something like that makes absolutely no difference to the way you train or anything like that -- it's just learning to be tough, learning to overcome something that your body wants to do.

Mental toughness has many components, but for an athlete the best path to mental toughness is to put yourself outside the comfort zone in the training --- and to accept the discomfort as an essential part of growing into a better athlete. Be positive about it - instead of whingeing about it.

I believe the thing that provides the difference between the great competitor and the ordinary competitor is just mental toughness. The person who is not mentally tough has learned all through their training and racing experience to rely on excuses for not actually having been able to do something extraordinary.