Mindful Performance Studies
The following studies are excerpted from the book, A Still Quiet Place for Athletes: Transformational and Mindfulness Skills for Finding Flow in Sports and in Life by Amy Saltzman M.D.
In a well-designed randomized controlled trial with college athletes from multiple sports, the participants who practiced mindfulness and acceptance demonstrated significant performance improvement when compared with participants who received routine Psychological Skills Training (PST – goal-setting, arousal regulation, imagery, self-talk). Additionally, the athletes in the Mindfulness and Acceptance group showed increases in adaptive emotion regulation and psychological flexibility, and decreases in anxiety, general psychological distress, hostility, eating concerns, and substance use.
Basketball players who were naturally more mindful than their peers had higher free throw percentages. The results indicated that increasing a player’s mindfulness score by one standard deviation, would increase game free throw percentage 5.75 percentage points. The authors conclude that mindfulness-based interventions could be expected to result in a substantial and meaningful increase in free throw percentage, an amount that would likely impact a team’s overall win/loss percentage dramatically.
Seven young elite golfers were taught mindfulness and acceptance. They improved the effectiveness of their training and their competitive performance, as measured by a higher national ranking.
In a four-week study with elite male shooters, the mindfulness group showed a significant reduction in salivary cortisol (major stress hormone) and a significant improvement in shooting performance, when compared with the control group of 48 shooters who did not receive mindfulness training.