11: THE B3-5CS MENTAL TOUGHNESS TRAINING MODEL: TRANSFERRABLE BEST PRACTICES FROM ELITE, HIGH-PERFORMANCE SPORT TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AND EMERGENCY-RESPONSE APPLICATIONS

Security, law enforcement and emergency-response operations tend to be highly stressful and demanding. Mental toughness skills (MTS) can be a psychological resource to help operations personnel thrive under high pressure and adversity. This paper summarizes the implementation strategy of using the ‘B3-5Cs’ mental toughness training model (Tham, 1996; Tham & Weigand, 2010). The ‘B3’ refers to the ‘Basic 3’ or the three basic skills of goal setting, imagery, and self-talk. The ‘5Cs’ denote the five application-based skills of Composure, Concentration, Confidence, Coping with adversities/challenges (or ‘Cope-ability’ for short) and Cohesion. This model, used in elite, high-performance sport, may be adapted for security, law enforcement and emergency-response applications. Developing MTSs may help these three personnel types across different disciplines to improve their adversity-coping capabilities and facilitate the injury or post-operations recovery process. When faced with critical situations, operations personnel may feel overwhelmed if they have a history of many stressors, a personality that might worsen the stress response, and/or insufficient coping resources (Williams & Andersen, 1998). Should they appraise the situation as being threatening or if they perceive that they lack the resources to manage a given situation, such feelings will most likely cause physiological and/or attentional changes and will further predispose them to performance errors and/or injuries. Operations and training psychology practitioners may therefore benefit from applying the B3-5Cs mental toughness model (Tham, 1996; Tham & Weigand, 2010) using a periodized psychological skills training approach.