Neurofeedback versus mindfulness on young football players anxiety and performance

Abstract

Nowadays, in athletic world exercise and physical practice are not only tools to achieve peak performance. In high level of athletic activities there are not so differences based on skilfulness and psychological differences determinant winner or loser. Athletes have to compete in anxiety situations and in reaction to these situations are experiencing excitement. Mindfulness and Neurofeedback interventions are included interventions that are used in the field of psychology, particularly sport psychology that includes two disparate aspects of psychological interventions i.e. technological and traditional. Therefore in this study, we examined the effects of Mindfulness and Neurofeedback interventions on the level of Sport Anxiety and Athletic performance of young football players. In this study, 45 Iranian Football players were assigned to three groups. Athletes in group 1 received twelve-session, 30-minute alpha/theta neurofeedback training, in group 2 received twelve-session, 30-minutes mindfulness training and control group did not receive any intervention. Sport Anxiety Scale and Shoot performance test were used for quantitative comparisons. The results of MANOVA showed that improvement of athletic performance scores and reduction of anxiety scale were significant in both experimental groups. In addition, there were not significant differences between both experimental groups in athletic performance, but there were significantly different between mindfulness groups compared to the neurofeedback group in sport anxiety scale. According to these findings, we concluded the alpha/theta neurofeedback training and mindfulness meditation training are appropriate to increase athletic performance and decrease level of sport anxiety.