Effects of Mindfulness for Performance Programme on Actual Performance in Ecological Sport Context: Two Studies in Basketball and Table Tennis

Abstract

Mindfulness For Performance is a programme that has been developed over 15 years. It aims to help athletes maintain effective attentional focus regardless of the disruptive sensations and thoughts induced by the performance situation. It is inspired by Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Acceptance Commitment Therapy programmes and has been adapted to the specificities of sport. It is composed of three steps: (a) psychoeducation and identification of the focus of attention, (b) mindfulness and acceptance training, and (c) integrating skills acquired into training and competition. This article reports the effects of MFP in two studies in national basketball players and in young table tennis players. The first study showed that mindfulness skills and free-throw accuracy during basketball games increased more in the experimental group than in the control group. Table tennis results revealed that participants who showed the highest percentage of adherence to the programme benefited more from MFP training in terms of performance outcome (i.e., accumulated points collected from published results compared with the baseline phase) than participants who showed weaker percentages of adherence to the programme. Both studies provided some evidence on the effects of MFP on specific performance indicators (i.e., free-throw accuracy in basketball and ranking points in table tennis), but this needs to be confirmed by further research measuring other relevant performance indicators. The impact and conditions of adherence also deserve more consideration.