That’s where mindfulness can come in. The skills learned through practicing mindfulness meditation not only translate to the athletic and performance realm, but they can be actively practiced any time we’re practicing our sport, plying our trade, or otherwise preparing for performance. Mindfulness skills can help you stay focused in moments of chaos and distraction (think, trying to make a free-throw with dozens or thousands of screaming fans trying to distract you) can help you stay in the moment when the stress and pressure of a situation threaten to carry you away (think remaining centered, focused, and ready at the start line of a race, even with thousands of strangers behind you ready to stampede at the sound of the gun), and it can help you find the almost mythical-sounding, but very much real and attainable flow state, that mind-state of heightened focus and performance where we act as if on instinct and perception of effort almost disappears. 

Mindfulness isn’t just about performing well in the big game/race/event, it’s about rolling with the punches, weathering the ups and downs we are bound to face in our training journeys, and, perhaps most of all, it’s about enjoying the road to get there. 

At this point, following the explosion of interest in mindfulness and meditation, their benefits for performance, especially sports performance are well studied and documented. Famous examples of high level athletes practicing mindfulness and attesting to its performance enhancing benefits abound–though of course Kobe Bryant still would be have been Kobe Bryant before he met George Mumford and learned to meditate. Here are the summaries of some studies finding positive benefits for teaching athletes and performers across a range of levels mindfulness-based interventions: 

• A series of case studies  involving elite athletes saw improvements in awareness and attention, competitive performance, task-focused attention and practice intensity
• NCAA Division II athletes from multiple sports demonstrated increased capacity to describe and be nonreactive to their internal experiences, increase in levels of experiential acceptance, an increased commitment to behaviors aimed at achieving athletic goals and values
• NCAA Division I athletic team saw greater mindfulness, greater goal-directed energy, and less perceived stresa
•    Elite canoeists and golfers increased performance following interventions
• College students  showed increased scores related to flow states, notably improving in relationship to clear goals, sense of control, challenge-skill balance, concentration, and loss of self-consciousness
• Mindfulness based intervention with long-distance runners, golfers, and archers (an obvious athletic grouping if ever there was one) saw meaningful performance gains with increased ability to act with awareness, and overall mindfulness, and decreased task-related worrying  and task-irrelevant thoughts
•  Emotional intelligence impact on half marathon finish times:  Trait Emotional Intelligence (emotional awareness, regulation, etc.) was a better predictor of half marathon performance than training load, experience, expertise.

So as you can see, the benefits of a practice like mindfulness meditation are both broad and deep! 

If you’re interested in learning more about mindfulness and how it can help you elevate your performance get in touch.