Press Release from Malmö University, May 2024
Mindfulness has become a large and recognized field within sports research driven by the sports psychology perspective. It is also growing exponentially, according to a new literature review from Malmö University.
Currently, there are around 450 mindfulness studies in the field of sports science with a focus on social science and the humanities. Joacim Andersson, associate professor in sports science with a focus on pedagogy at the Department of Sport Sciences, has just compiled a knowledge overview of the state of research around mindfulness in the world of sports.
He highlights that the research has two areas:
– Sports psychology drives the field and is close to clinical and medical mindfulness research, in terms of study design and conceptual development. However, sports oriented research lags behind medical research by a decade.
– The second is a clear sports and physical education part which is much smaller, around 40 studies. There are hardly any knowledge overviews. People within this orientation are more interested in subjective experiences and how it can contribute to general health. In sports psychology, it is mostly about effect studies.
Mindfulness is a very hot topic in the world of sports. In sports psychology, it is described as an epochal change. It has gone from psychological models focused on performance to mindfulness models that are more about accepting feelings and creating awareness of one’s own physical and mental mood.
– Mindfulness is of interest for athletes. Being present in the moment offers the ability to recall practiced techniques when it really matters. The focus is on acceptance. Humility does not appear to inhibit performance. In general, the field can show clear results, mindfulness-based interventions have an effect on increased sporting ability, increased mindfulness skills as well as increased ability for self-affirming thoughts and increased mental health among practitioners.
In his review of the literature, Joacim Andersson has seen how mindfulness became increasingly recognized around 2010–2015 and then grew exponentially. It follows the same trend as general mindfulness research, with 5–10 new studies every month. However, there are gaps where more research is needed.
– Individually, the good effects of mindfulness interventions are shown, but it has proven difficult to compile empirical results from different studies in order to create syntheses and see more large-scale effects. More research is also needed in order to explain the effects of sexual harassment, bullying and the difficult issues of sport.
Studies about school and student well-being could be better applied to sports cultures to see not only how to perform better but how to recover from for example burnout and the like. More such studies have started to appear in the last twelvemonths.
The research also shows that the effects of mindfulness diminish, longer studies are needed to see the long-term effects. For example, it has proven difficult to carry out meta-analyses where you collect data from many different studies.
– In general, mindfulness shows good results. However, I was surprised that there are reviews on long-distance running and mindfulness where no significant results of interventions are shown. One might think that in endurance sports it would be important to manage presence in the present, but results are seen mainly seen in precision sports, says Joacim Andersson.
