If you haven’t seen any of our Toughness Tuesday posts, we like to encourage our social media followers to participate in a Toughness Tuesday challenge each Tuesday. Some of them are sport specific depending on which Mindset profile you are looking at, but some of the challenges are generalized to be applicable for all types of athletes! And the purpose of these challenges is to increase your toughness each week in a specific way. This blog post is dedicated to some of our top Toughness Tuesday Challenges!

1. Run a timed mile! I remember in school the “mile day” was one of the most dreaded days in PE class; but now I wish I would’ve taken it more seriously! Running a timed mile periodically is a great way to visually see how you are improving as an athlete. If you’ve never done it before, all you have to do is run a mile and time it. Then, you can run another mile each week and try to improve your time! This is a great way to associate a number (your time) with your improvement and you can gauge your progress. Turn this once dreaded activity into a way that’ll increase your toughness!

2. Challenge someone to hit at you… and dig them! This challenge is going to require a few of your teammates, so it can be a fun challenge for all of you! You’ll need one teammate to toss or set for a hitter and then you’ll need a teammate (or maybe a few teammates) to be the hitter(s). Have the hitter attack freely at you while you play defense on the whole court. The best strategy for playing full-court defense by yourself is to assume the middle back position and just be ready to dart in any direction you need to. This is going to improve your explosiveness on defense! And you can even switch halfway through so that you are the hitter and your teammate is the defender – that way you both can practice your defense and your offense!

3. Squat challenge! We recently posted about how this challenge can really work those quad muscles! Start by doing 15 free-standing squats the first day. Then, each day increase your squat number by 5. Eventually, you’ll increase your squat number to 100 free-standing squats a day! If you really feel up to committing to this challenge then you can continue to add 5 more squats a day from there! This challenge is ideal because it doesn’t require a lot of time, you can do it by yourself, and you can potentially do this challenge anywhere! All you need is your body, clothes that will allow you to move freely, and the motivation to commit to the challenge!

4. Plank-off! This one is one of my personal favorites! A plank-off challenge is essentially just encouraging you to gather your teammates and have each person hold a plank position until the last person drops! Make sure that nobody has bottoms in the air or saggy backs to ensure that everyone has the correct form! This challenge is great to do right as you finish warm-up stretches or as a final challenge at the end of practice. If you want an extra challenge: have each person do crunches after they drop from the plank while they are waiting for the last person to drop! This will make sure everyone is working their core muscles for the maximum amount of time!

5. Swim laps until you can’t anymore! This is a fun challenge because swimming is a low-impact exercise that essentially works your whole body. For this challenge, gather a group and hit the pool! Challenge yourself and your group to swim laps until you can’t anymore! This is just a friendly competitive way to encourage you all to push yourself! Of course you really need to make sure that you are safe during this challenge – so be careful to not exhaust yourself to the point that you are in danger and always make sure you use a pool that has a lifeguard present. We want everyone to stay safe!

6. Push-up contest! This challenge is similar to the plank-off challenge but requires a little more movement! It’s just a standard push-up contest; basically gather a group and see who can do the most push-ups! For this challenge, make sure everyone has good form with flat backs to make sure no one injures themselves unnecessarily. You can either have everyone just go for it and count on their own without monitoring the speed at which the push-ups are done; or you can all agree to go down and up at the same time during the push-up.  Either way, decide beforehand to make sure it is fair and you’re good to go!

7. Confide in a friend or coach. This Toughness Tuesday challenge encourages you to improve yourself socially and mentally rather than physically. It’s important for you to feel comfortable enough to confide in a friend or coach if you need to. Especially if something is going on with your volleyball environment, you coach should really be made aware of what’s going on. For example, if you’re having trouble getting along with a teammate – your coach can help you mediate the situation! Or another example, if you’re having trouble mastering a certain skill you’ve been working on – let your coach know so that they understand you’re trying your hardest and they might even provide you with some extra guidance or tips! But you’ll never know unless you communicate!

8. Speak in front of a group. This Toughness Tuesday challenge is another social and mental challenge. Plus the benefits are two-fold – it’ll help you be tougher mentally and it’ll also benefit you for school or your professional life! And this challenge can be as small or as a big as you want it to be. Maybe you can start by speaking in front of your team about the positive or negatives regarding your past competition or raise your hand to speak in class. Alternatively, you can really go hard with this challenge and try to be the speaker at your upcoming graduation or volunteer to speak at a local event. We just want to encourage you to take this challenge and make it benefit you the most – good luck!

9. Share your goal publicly. It’s always a good idea to have goals, whether they’re life goals, school goals, volleyball goals, etc. But the next challenge is to share that goal publicly. Sharing your goal out loud makes you a little vulnerable to the people you share it with, which is a good thing! It also helps keep you accountable because now more people know what your goal is and can help keep you on track and motivate you if you need it!

10. Share your faith. This final challenge is another one that isn’t focused on your physicality. Sharing your faith with someone or multiple people will give you an opportunity to open up to people in a way that you potentially haven’t before. This is a toughness challenge because sometimes it’s not easy to expose yourself like that to people, but it’s important to! Be open to having these conversations with people and it’ll only benefit you!

Some of these challenges are focused on the physical aspects while others are focused on the mental aspects. Either way, all of these challenges will make you a tougher athlete and person! If you liked some of these challenges and you want to see more, check out our social media accounts! Volleyball Mindset is on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all under Volleyball Mindset – check us out!