Neuroscientists Give Coaches and Athletes a Five-Week Mindfulness Protocol
There are a lot of claims about the benefits of mindfulness in sports without hard evidence to back it up. So, I can understand why many coaches and athletes are skeptical about adding mindfulness training to their already busy practice schedules. However, I highly recommend coaches and athletes take note of recent research published in 2020 in the Journal of Neural Plasticity that provides solid evidence on the benefits of mindfulness.
This research concludes that a five-week mindfulness program “can enhance the mindfulness level, endurance performance, and multiple cognitive functions, including executive functions, of university athletes.“
In addition, a 2022 Runners world article citing this research adds further context to the benefits of mindfulness by citing several other evidence based research studies. It states:
A 2021 study in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that following the completion of a mindfulness-based training program, female college students reported decreases in their perception of exercise intensity and other negative feelings, such as fatigue, following an 800-meter run…
A 2021 study in the Journal of Athletic Training found mindfulness training, in conjunction with traditional physical therapies, reduced pain while running, improved coping strategies, and decreased pain catastrophizing in patients with knee pain.
So, with benefits that include increasing an athlete’s endurance and pain tolerance, unquestionably adding mindfulness training to an athlete’s routine is a no brainer. Moreover, the research also suggests that it only takes five weeks to start receiving some of these benefits:
This investigation demonstrated that a five-week mindfulness training program with two 30 min practice sessions per week positively affected the participating athletes’ endurance performance and cognitive functions, including executive functions, in addition to increasing the efficiency of conflict resolution in neural processes.
Furthermore, the neuroscientists were gracious enough to outline their complete five-week program in detail in the appendix of the report. If you’re a coach of athletes who depend on endurance and pain tolerance to be at their best, there is really no excuse for not adding mindfulness to your coaching practices. If you need help, please contact me here.