Abstract
Factors such as psychological well-being, sleep quality, and athletic coping skills can influence athletic performance. Mindfulness-based interventions, including mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), have been shown to benefit these factors, suggesting they may, at least indirectly, benefit athletic performance. Moreover, while mindfulness training has been linked to better accuracy in some high-precision sports, whether it can improve non-precision elements of athletic performance is unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of MBSR on psychological well-being, sleep, athletic coping skills, and rowing performance in collegiate rowers in a controlled experimental design. Members of a Division I NCAA Women’s Rowing team completed either an 8-week MBSR course along with their regular athletic training program (Intervention group) or the athletic training program alone (Control group). Measurements of interest were taken at baseline and again either during or shortly following the intervention. In contrast to the Control group, the Intervention group showed improvements in psychological well-being, subjective and objective sleep quality, athletic coping skills, and rowing performance as measured by a 6,000-m ergometer test. Improvements in athletic coping skills, psychological well-being, and subjective sleep quality were all correlated with increases in mindfulness in the Intervention group. These results suggest that mindfulness training may benefit non-precision aspects of athletic performance. Incorporating mindfulness training into athletic training programs may benefit quality of life and performance in student athletes.
Highlights
Collegiate student-athletes face a wide array of stressors, ranging from those related to athletic performance and academics to adjusting to life away from home
Paired-samples t-tests indicated that scores significantly increased in the Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) group [t = −2.646, p = 0.019, Cohen’s d = 0.683, 95% CI (−26.797, −2.803)] but not in the Control group [t = 0.000, p = 1.000, Cohen’s d = 0, 95% CI (−11.827, 11.827); Figure 2]
Change in the well-being score was significantly negatively correlated with change in the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) score in the MBSR group (r = −0.738, p = 0.003; Figure 3B)
Summary
Collegiate student-athletes face a wide array of stressors, ranging from those related to athletic performance and academics to adjusting to life away from home. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a cognitive training program that can improve psychological well-being and sleep quality (Kabat-Zinn, 1982; Grossman et al, 2004; Cincotta et al, 2011; Li et al, 2018; Rusch et al, 2019), and may indirectly benefit athletic performance. Competition anxiety, trait anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation hinder performance In both competition and training, athletes with lower levels of anxiety perform better than those with higher levels of anxiety (Hill et al, 2011; Castro-Sánchez et al, 2018). Under high-stress situations, athletes with fears of negative evaluation demonstrate increased competition anxiety and decreased performance (Hill et al, 2011; Geukes et al, 2017). Mental toughness or the ability to remain “determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure” (Jones, 2002) mediates the ability of athletes to excel under high-stress situations (Nicholls et al, 2015)
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