Improve Athletic Endurance with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“endurance athletes. In fact, endurance sport could be considered a perfect meditative state to use these techniques, as it encourages a state of flow due to the repetitiveness of marathon running in particular. “ – Charlotte Griffin
Athletic performance requires the harmony of mind and body. Excellence is in part physical and in part psychological. That is why an entire profession of Sports Psychology has developed. “In sport psychology, competitive athletes are taught psychological strategies to better cope with a number of demanding challenges related to psychological functioning.” They use a number of techniques to enhance performance including mindfulness training. It has been shown to improve attention and concentration and emotion regulation and reduces anxiety and worry and rumination, and the physiological and psychological responses to stress. As a result, mindfulness training has been employed by athletes and even by entire teams to enhance their performance.
In today’s Research News article “On Mindfulness Training for Promoting Mental Toughness of Female College Students in Endurance Exercise.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8410402/ ) Wang and colleagues recruited female college athletes and randomly assigned them to receive once a weeks for 8-weeks of either 90 minutes of mindfulness training or classroom studies. They were measured before and after training for mindfulness and psychological toughness. They then performed an 800-meter run followed by a measure of subjective fatigue.
They found that after training there were significant increases in mindfulness and mental toughness (including tenacity, strength, and optimism) in the mindfulness trained group but not the control group. After the 800-meter run there was a significant reduction in perceived exercise intensity in the mindfulness group but not the control group.
The results suggest that mindfulness training improves the mental toughness and reduces perceived exercise intensity in female college athletes. The researchers did not explore the mechanisms by which mindfulness produced these benefits but prior research has demonstrated that mindfulness training improves pain tolerance. This may be why the athletes found the 800-meter run to be lower in exercise intensity than the control group.
So, improve athletic endurance with mindfulness.
“The mindfulness group significantly improved their time to exhaustion, indicating a benefit to endurance exercise performance.” – Training4Endurance
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Wang, Y., Tian, J., & Yang, Q. (2021). On Mindfulness Training for Promoting Mental Toughness of Female College Students in Endurance Exercise. Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 2021, 5596111. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/5596111
Abstract
Objective
The aim of this study was to examine the promoting effects of mindfulness training on female college students’ mental toughness in endurance exercise.
Methods
A cluster sampling method was used to select 60 female college students as subjects. Based on the body mass index (BMI), stratified randomization was used to divide them into the mindfulness-training group and the control group. Participants in mindfulness-training group had an 8-week mindfulness training, while participants in control group waited. Before and after training, Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) were used for pretest and posttest, and paired t-test and covariance analysis were performed on pretest and posttest between-group data.
Results
(1) Paired t-test results showed the posttest scores (26.67 ± 3.56; 20.97 ± 3.66; 126.53 ± 8.59) of the three dimensions of description, nonresponse and FFMQ total score of the mindfulness-training group were higher than the pretest scores (25.53 ± 3.74; 19.23 ± 3.59; 121.43 ± 6.78). Statistical significance was shown in their differences (t = −2.25; −2.70; −3.25, p < 0.05). However, there was no statistical significance in the pretest and posttest of control group. The covariance analyses showed the posttest scores of the mindfulness-training group in three dimensions of description, nonresponse, and FFMQ were higher than the posttest scores of the control group. Statistical significance was shown in their differences (F = 6.55; 6.08; 5.91; p < 0.05). (2) Paired t-test showed posttest scores (46.50 ± 5.93; 30.40 ± 3.75; 15.00 ± 2.34) were significantly higher than pretest scores (42.60 ± 7.68; 26.50 ± 4.32; 12.87 ± 2.51) in all dimensions of the mental toughness of the mindfulness-training group. Statistical significance was shown in their differences (t = −3.135, −4.765, −4.922, p < 0.01). However, there was no significant difference in the pretest and posttest scores in all dimensions of the mental toughness of the control group. The covariance analysis showed that the posttest scores of all dimensions of the mental toughness of the mindfulness-training group were higher than those of the control group, and the differences were statistically significant (F = 11.133, 12.101, 16.053, all p < 0.001). (3) Paired t-test showed that the posttest score of the mindfulness-training group on exercise intensity perception immediately after 800-meter endurance run (5.67 ± 2.61) was lower than the pretest score (7.03 ± 1.24) and the difference was statistically significant (t = 4.18, p < 0.001), while the difference was not statistically significant in the control group. The covariance analysis showed that the posttest score of the mindfulness-training group on exercise intensity perception was lower than that of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (F = 15.81, p < 0.001).
Conclusion
Mindfulness training improved the level of female college students’ mindfulness and mental toughness in their endurance sports, while reducing the fatigue feeling of female college students in endurance sports.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8410402/