"You cannot function without being mentally balanced." - Toto Wolff, Team Principal, Mercedes F1

We celebrate strength in sport. Grit. Endurance. The ability to push past limits and deliver under pressure. But there’s another kind of strength we rarely talk about, the kind that admits when something’s not working. The kind that asks for help.

In elite sports, that kind of strength is still too often mistaken for weakness.

Many athletes still hesitate to work openly with mental performance coaches. They fear being seen as fragile or unfocused, as if tending to the mind somehow diminishes the body. It doesn’t. It completes it.

Just ask Michael Jordan. He worked closely with mindfulness coach George Mumford to manage pressure and stay grounded. Or Novak Djokovic, who credits his return to peak form not just to training, but to deep mental and emotional work. Elite teams like the All Blacks and Germany’s national football team have embedded mental skills coaching as core to their success, not a bonus, but a baseline.

If the greats are doing it, why does the stigma persist?

The Mental Game Is the Real Game

Pressure. Uncertainty. Scrutiny. Long stretches away from home. These are baked into the life of elite athletes. Increasingly, many are speaking openly about the toll.

Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Nick Kyrgios, Michael Phelps, Paddy Pimblett, these aren’t fringe figures. They’re world-class performers choosing honesty over silence.

And that honesty matters. When athletes speak up about mental health, they challenge the old belief that toughness means staying quiet. They remind us that vulnerability isn’t weakness, it’s part of the work. It’s part of being human.

But what about the people coaching them?

The Unseen Pressure on Coaches and Technical Directors

While athletes’ mental wellbeing is finally entering public conversation, coaches remain largely left out.

The tragic death of rugby league coach Paul Green brought this into sharp focus. Coaches face many of the same pressures: performance demands, media scrutiny, long hours, and job insecurity. But far fewer feel safe speaking up about it.

A 2020 Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) study found that over 40 percent of Olympic-level coaches reported symptoms that would warrant professional mental health support. Fewer than 6 percent had sought help. One in three feared it would reflect poorly on them. That’s not just stigma. That’s silence.

The Cost of Stoicism

Coaches are expected to be unshakable. They make decisions, absorb pressure, and speak for the team. But behind the scenes, they face relentless schedules, extended time away from family, and the constant threat of job loss tied to results.

And it’s not just the effort. It’s the overload. As Warren Gatland, a world-class rugby coach, said in a recent conversation: “Burnout comes from role overload, not just effort.” Today’s coaches are tacticians, mentors, media liaisons, emotional anchors, and performance managers all at once. The result isn’t just fatigue. It’s fragmentation. Quiet exhaustion that rarely gets noticed until something breaks.

Less than half of the coaches in the AIS study were satisfied with their work-life balance. Chronic overwork and stress were eroding not just performance but quality of life.

Still, the conversation around coach wellbeing continues to lag behind.

Building a New Playbook

Mental performance coaching is not therapy. It is proactive. It develops mental skills like focus, confidence, and recovery. Clinical support plays a vital role in crisis. Mental coaching complements that work by helping people stay grounded, build resilience, and perform under pressure.

But support can’t be piecemeal.

One promising model is the integrated support team, where coaches, psychologists, physiotherapists, and nutritionists work as a unit rather than in silos. When mental support is woven into the everyday fabric of performance instead of being added on later, it changes everything. It builds trust. It prevents small cracks from becoming fractures.

Final Whistle

We are long past the point where mental performance can be dismissed as soft. In high-performance environments, it is often the difference between good and great, between burnout and breakthrough.

And yet, while athletes are beginning to speak openly, the coaches and technical directors guiding them remain largely unseen.

These leaders carry enormous weight. They are expected to stay composed and capable while navigating constant uncertainty, emotional pressure, and public scrutiny. They are strategists, caretakers, and decision-makers. But rarely are they seen as people with mental health needs of their own.

That has to change.

Supporting the wellbeing of coaches is not a luxury. It is essential to the future of sport. When we give our leaders the permission and resources to care for their minds, we protect not just individuals, we protect the integrity of the whole system.

Because in the end, the game is not just played on the field. It is shaped, sustained, and often saved behind the scenes by minds under pressure who also deserve room to breathe.