Abstract This study’s objective was to analyze the relationship between mental toughness and martial artists’ performance strategies. Two hundred athletes (male: 105, female: 95) with an age range of 18-36 years (mean:25.12, s=4.96) who competed at university to the national standard of martial arts participated in this study. Participants answered mental toughness questionnaires and performance strategies inventory. The Pearson correlation results showed a positive and significant relationship between mental toughness and automaticity, goal-setting, imagery, self-talk, and emotional control, and a negative and significant relationship between mental toughness and attentional control in practice. Furthermore, there is a positive and significant relationship between mental toughness and activation, relaxation, self-talk, imagery, goal-setting, and emotional control in the competition. The multiple linear regression analysis results showed that goal-setting and imagery in practice and competition, self-talk in practice, and relaxation in the competition could predict mental toughness. In analyzing the subscales of mental toughness, it was concluded that tough emotions could be loaded on eight subscales of performance strategies. In the Independent-Sample T-Test, the significant differences related to gender were that men reported higher levels of self-talk (t=3.24, p<0.001), automaticity (t=2.76, p<0.006), goal-setting (t=2.63, p<0.009), imagery (t=2.18, p<0.03) and relaxation (t=2.17, p<0.03) than women.

TThe aim of this study was to examine the effect of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy training on mental skills of young soccer players. For this purpose, 30 soccer players were assigned to an experimental group of 15 players (intervention based on Mindfulness) and control group of 15 players that participations’ age ranged from 17 to 20 years old in provincial competitions in the year 2017-18. Athletes in the experimental group participated in MBCT course over eight weekly sessions of 2 h each. The control group did not receive any intervention. Before and after interventions Ottawa mental skills assessment tool questionnaire (Omsat-3) were used to collect data. The results of MANOVA showed that significant improvement in all sub-scales scores; Focusing (P=0.001), Refocusing (P=0.001), Imagery (P=0.001), Mental practice (P=0.001), and Competition planning (P=0.001) in the experimental group than control group. According to these findings, we concluded that Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy training is appropriate to improve the level of cognitive skills of soccer players.