A Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment-Based Approach to Athletic Performance Enhancement: Theoretical Considerations

Abstract

While traditional cognitive-behavioral skills-training-based approaches to athletic performance enhancement posit that negative thoughts and emotions must be con-trolled, eliminated, or replaced for athlete-clients to perform optimally, recent evi-dence suggests that efforts to control, eliminate, or suppress these internal states may actually have the opposite effect. Interventions based on mindfulness and ac-ceptance suggest that internal cognitive and emotional states need not be eliminated, changed, or controlled in order to facilitate positive behavioral outcomes. Rather, it is suggested that an alternative or supplemental approach to the enhancement of ath-letic performance may be achieved through strategies and techniques that target the development of mindful (nonjudgmental) present-moment acceptance of internal experiences such as thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, along with a clarifi-cation of valued goals and enhanced attention to external cues, responses, and con-tingencies that are required for optimal athletic performance. Applied sport psychology, in its efforts to enhance the competitive perfor-mance of athletes, has traditionally utilized cognitive behavioral methods and techniques with an emphasis on developing self-control of internal states, commonly referred to as psychological skills training (Whelan, Mahoney, & Meyers, 1991). In contrast, behavioral theorists in professional psychology have recently begun to advocate and demonstrate empirical support for inter-ventions that emphasize acceptance, rather than direct change, suppression, or control, of cognitive and affective experiences (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999; Roemer & Orsillo, 2002; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002). With modern meta-cognitive and acceptance-based theory, research, and practice as a foundation, and theoretical aspects of self-regulatory processes in athletic performance carefully considered, the purpose of this article is to present a new approach to performance enhancement that, adapted and developed