Mindfulness: A New Approach to Enhancing Athletic Performance

The numbers are astonishing. Mental health has drastically declined from COVID-19, but even before the pandemic, the commonality of anxiety and depression in people were still on a rise. There was a 27% increase of anxiety and 24% increase of depression (between 2016 and 2019) for adolescents. Despite these numbers calling for the need of mental health care, the number for those who receive it have decreased. In 2016, 82% of kids received mental health care services while in 2020 it was only 80%. 

Historically, mental illnesses were always looked down on. People with mental illness were categorized as unfit for society; many ended up without treatment in jail or in a hospital that often were cruel and isolating environments. Fast forward to today, the acceptance of mental illnesses have come a long way; yet for sports this old view is still holding strong. There’s always been that perspective of athletes being strong and powerful. They are expected to be in tip-top health mentally and physically because they’re competing to be the best in their field. If they were to admit their mental illness, it would be perceived as weak and fragile. 

Perfect examples of athletes facing backlash from society was when Biles, a gymnast, withdrew from several Olympics events and when Naomi Osaka, a tennis player, withdrew from the 2021 French Open, both taking time for their mental health. In Osaka’s case, her refusal to participate in press conferences due to anxiety and depression caused a heavy fine from the French Open officials. The directors of all four grand slams even issued statements that Osaka was risking banishment from an important and highly profitable tournament if she refused to face the media in the future. 

Osaka and Biles are both breaking the norm and challenging a stigma that has been here for generations; normalizing mental health on an international scale. Even Nathan Chen, a figure skater, applauded them saying that he had no idea that withdrawing was even an option for athletes.

In recent research of mental health in sports, there’s been two promising technological tools that could potentially reduce mental illnesses in athletes: mindfulness and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy). Studies prove that these two methods have improved athletic performances and more importantly help them to lead a healthier and happier life outside of their sport.

Mindfulness

A former coach, Minkler partnered with psychologist Tim Pineau in a study on a women's lacrosse team at Marymount University in Arlington, VA. This experiment was to test if mindfulness training was effective to improve players' performance and their mental health. The training ranged from stationary meditations to physical exercises such as yoga, walking, throwing, and catching. Notably, they also conducted group discussions of letting go of mistakes. After 6 weeks of mindfulness training and follow ups, post-training surveys showed that players felt they were able to focus more on the game and were less anxious while playing. The mindfulness training helped not just their mental health, but improved their overall performance: before the mindfulness training the team had 15 losses and 4 wins, but afterwards they had more wins than losses. In 2019, researchers in the Journal of Sports Psychology in Action reported that, “The next season, the team won the regional conference championship.”

Another study with the University of Miami football team supports this finding. Amishi Jha, a neuroscientist, and Al Golden, the coach, partnered up to track how well the football team was able to pay attention during preseason training. The team was split into two groups: one was given a mindfulness mediation training and the other conducted a relaxation exercise training. After preseason, they were given the attention test again, and Jha confirms that while the results were worse overall, the conditions of those who regularly practiced mindfulness exercises dropped less drastically.

Finally, Graham Mertz, a quarterback for the University of Wisconsin–Madison, shares his personal experience with mindfulness training that supports Minker’s and Jha’s findings. After a disappointing season in 2020, Mertz began to work with Chad McGehee, director of meditation training. The mindfulness training aided Mertz in finding out how to reset himself mentally between the 40 second offensive plays. He spent much of his time learning how to identify anchors to bring his attention back to the present and ignore the past play. As a result, his team played better, finishing the 2021 season with 8 wins, 4 losses, and a win in December’s Las Vegas Bowl.

Ultimately, by shifting more time towards meditation and focus activities, athletes have been able to enhance their performance.

ACT

ACT is another technique that counselors use to help athletes improve their performance and mental health. ACT tries to teach athletes to separate their competitive and personal identities. It tries to prevent a spiral of negative thoughts. It doesn’t prevent them, but separates the thought to make it not personal. 

A psychiatrist at the University of Putra Malaysia in Seri Kembangan, Eugene Koh Boon Yau, worked with three self-doubting triathletes that competed at international compressions, representing Malaysia. The 6 weeks Yau worked with the athlete consisted of labeling their thoughts and emotions to be able to accept the negative ones and then having them identify their values, what they wanted to be remembered for, and the importance of their career. This helps teach athletes to focus on their performance without getting too stressed out about what the other people are doing around them. A triathlete that worked with Yau, Edwin Thiang, agrees that the training, “does help me with reducing anxiety and overthinking.” The other athletes that worked with Yau agreed: One found it easier to accept thoughts of self-doubt when a competitor overtook him. Before the mental training this athlete would lose hope after a competitor passed him and would slow down, but after the mental training it didn’t matter as much to him and he set a personal pace for himself during the race. Yau reported in the May 2021 Journal of Sport Psychology in Action that one of his other triathletes that he worked with said that the training helped him stay committed to physical training.

Mindfulness and ACT methods combined improves players movement and focus during the game, especially pushing past mental barriers of negative thoughts. Players trained by these methods are less likely to be angry or sad about mistakes they made, and are better able to work through issues during the game to return their focus back to the present. Mertz also shares that during his mindfulness training he realized that he was so focused on football that he was neglecting the other parts in his life. He learned to pay attention not only on the field, but also to his mental health. Studies using these techniques have proved that the benefits of the training have consisted of improved focus on readings and better communication with friends and family. Concerning all of this information, Jha would like to test how mindfulness and ACT training might affect Olympic athletes.

Summary

Researchers using these techniques say they’ve seen similar off-the-field benefits for their student ­athletes, including improved focus on readings for class and better communication with friends and family. With those results in mind, Jha says she’d like to test how mindfulness and ACT training might work for Olympic teams. Jha in fact had several briefings with the US and Australian Olympic team representatives about her training. Although this is not definite, what she would plan is to train the Olympic coaches to work with their athletes and track their rival’s performance and their mental health. Perhaps Biles and Osaka withdrawing to focus on their mental health was a blessing in disguise. By taking a break, it helps show how significant mental health is and should be taken care of. Especially being athletes, it shows that physical health is not the only thing that matters, but also peoples’ emotions, and mental well-being.

Works cited:

A brief history of mental illness and the U.s. mental health care system. (n.d.). Uniteforsight.org. Retrieved January 3, 2023, from https://www.uniteforsight.org/mental-health/module2

Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital. (2020, January 13). The Surprising History of Mental Illness Treatment. Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital. https://batonrougebehavioral.com/the-surprising-history-of-mental-illness-treatment/

De La Cruz, M. H. (2021, July 30). In a sea of support for Simone Biles, there’s razor-sharp criticism. WXIA. https://www.11alive.com/article/sports/olympics/simone-biles-critics-backlash-after-tokyo-withdrawal/85-bbdc94fa-1189-44b2-a469-7f3af2acf8d7

Osorio, A., Alker, J., Park, E., Burak, E. W., Lawson, N., & Dwyer, A. (2022, March 24). Research update: Children’s anxiety and depression on the rise. Center For Children and Families. https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2022/03/24/research-update-childrens-anxiety-and-depression-on-the-rise/

Silber, T. (2021, December 23). Simone Biles faced backlash, but mental health experts and teammates alike offered support. Ragan’s Workplace Wellness. https://raganwellness.com/simone-biles-faced-backlash-but-mental-health-experts-and-teammates-alike-offered-support/

Yeager, A. (2022, January 26). How mindfulness-based training can give elite athletes a mental edge. Science News Magazine. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/athlete-mental-health-mindfulness-psychology-elite-olympics

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