Outcomes of clinical studies of mindset and lifestyle in sports performance: a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: The athlete's lifestyle and mindset become an integral part of sports performance. The quest to improve the performance of world-class athletes involves understanding the attributes, skills, strategies, support, environment, and lifestyles of elite performers. Objective: It was to develop a systematic review to highlight the main outcomes of clinical studies of mindset and lifestyle in sports performance. Methods: The PRISMA Platform systematic review rules were followed. The research was carried out from September to October 2023 in the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Science Direct, Scielo, and Google Scholar databases. The quality of the studies was based on the GRADE instrument and the risk of bias was analyzed according to the Cochrane instrument. Results and Conclusion: A total of 151 articles were found, and 34 articles were evaluated in full, and 27 were included and developed in the present systematic review study. Considering the Cochrane tool for risk of bias, the overall assessment resulted in 29 studies with a high risk of bias and 44 studies that did not meet GRADE and AMSTAR-2. Most studies showed homogeneity in their results, with X2=61.9%>50%. It was concluded that champion athletes attribute their good mindset as the main predictor of competitive success. Furthermore, championship performance requires a particular way of life that integrates mindset, performance factors, lifestyle, and relationships. High-performance strategies include using sharp mental rehearsal skills and practice retrieval.