More on Toughness

"Our ultimate success in mountaineering (and life) is based not on our performance when everything goes well, but rather in those moments when little or nothing does; when we are faced with adversity." - Erik Kapitulik et al. in The Program

Toughness is a skill. Commit to becoming tougher than you are and tougher than your opponents. Tough players and teams summon the physical and emotional resources to do more when adversity arises...which it always does.

Part of toughness is elite physical conditioning. 

1) Make conditioning part of your training. Long rallies and long matches require conditioning. 

2) Toughness is focus, "being where your feet are." Focus allows you to read and execute "low probability" plays. 

The 2022 team showed maximum resilience during a postseason match with Billerica. 

Set 4, Melrose leads 23-22. Ruth Breen slows an attack, Emma Desmond makes a running one-handed save going out of bounds, and Chloe Gentile gets a kill with an athletic adjustment. 

3) Toughness is doing what must be done, the right way, when it needs to be done. Go back to the video. Watch the bench. They are engaged. 

Toughness means doing the work. Toughness means leaving your comfort zone. Toughness means sacrificing what you want now for something you want more later. 

Be conditioned. Learn to anticipate plays and get to the spot. Be focused and relentless. 

Lagniappe. Be coachable.