Catalyst for courage: college athletes’ experience participating in a mindfulness and self-compassion intervention

Over the past 2 decades, mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) in sport have grown from a niche application for performance excellence into a mainstream intervention for performance enhancement and well-being among athletes. The Mindfulness Meditation Training for Sport 2.0 intervention has contributed to the growth through its initial empirical support. Open trials and feasibility studies have shown encouraging results in several student-athlete populations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a MBI in sport, MMTS 2.0, through the lens of a mixed methods quasi-experimental design examining specific psychometric correlates related with performance enhancement and well-being and a sport-specific outcome measure. The aim is to provide a more in-depth understanding of student-athletes’ experience completing Mindfulness Meditation for Sport 2.0 (MMTS) and demonstrate the opportunity for performance enhancement and holistic development through a MBI in sport. Participants were 60 student-athletes from two Division III collegiate men’s soccer teams who competed a sport-specific performance marker and seven psychometric measures at two time points (pre-intervention and post-intervention). One team (n=30) was selected as the experimental group who received the MMTS 2.0 intervention, and another team (n=30) was selected as the control group (no-treatment). In contrast to the hypothesis, the experimental group showed no significant difference in the performance marker and the seven psychometric measures when compared to the control group. Though, exploratory additions showed significant improvement for the MTMS 2.0 experimental group in self-compassion from pre-intervention to post-intervention, while no change was found with the control group. The study offers promising results that indicate the MMTS 2.0 increase student-athletes scores of self-compassion. While the statistical findings are limited, the qualitative responses from the participants (n=9) suggest that the MMTS 2.0 had a strong impact on their performance as a student and athlete. These findings provide insight into how the delivery of mindfulness and self-compassion skills in a time-limited environment help male athletes combat competition distress. Recommendations for new mindfulness and self-compassion scales to capture impact of a time-limited intervention are offered