A few posts back, I penned part I of the Deeper Dive Into Mindfulness. In that post, I explored Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book “Mindfulness for Beginners”. If you missed that post, you can find it HERE
Kabat-Zinn does an amazing job describing what mindfulness is (and what it is not), and what you can expect from a mindfulness practice.
The second book I introduced in Part I, and the topic of this post, is the book “Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement – Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches” by Keith A. Kaufman, Carol R. Glass and Timothy R. Pineau.
The first thing I noticed after picking up this book is that the forward was written by none other than Jon Kabat-Zinn! In fact, his work was referenced multiple times throughout the book.
In contrast to Kabat-Zinn’s book, which is made up of some 82 chapters, “Mindful Sport Performance” is broken into 4 sections with a total of 16 chapters. The “meat and potatoes” are contained in section 2 in which there are 6 chapters – one each devoted to a lesson from their Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement (MSPE) protocol. The material is presented in such a way that you could teach yourself MSPE from the materials, or use them to actually conduct a class. Nothing is held back – there are literal lesson plans and detailed instructions / full sample scripts in the book as well as references to supplemental materials that give you everything you need to learn the MSPE methodology. The protocol is designed so that the material could be presented in 6 weekly sessions. The authors have trialed this protocol many times and have tweaked it in order to provide the optimal results. They have invited others to do the same and to conduct independent research on the effectiveness in the hope that it can be improved even further.
The 6 sessions teach and provide a practice regimen for such techniques as:
- The candy exercise (mindful eating exercise)
- Diaphragmatic breathing
- Body scan
- Sitting meditation
- Mindful Yoga
- Walking Meditation
- Sport Meditation
Case studies are also included which help to see how athletes have experienced the protocol in real world conditions. The balance of the book provides additional applications outside of sport as well as a pretty thorough review of the research available on mindfulness in sport.
One idea I found intriguing was the sport mediation lessons. I found it very interesting to consider practicing meditation in the context of actually going through the movements of your own particular sport. I was anxious to try it! On my next bike ride, I chose as my “anchor” (which in traditional sitting mediation might be your breathing) the feeling of the force felt between my feet and the pedals.
What I discovered was that I was applying much more force with my right leg as opposed to my left. I suspect this may have been due to issues I had with my left knee some time ago that I was still sub-consciously protecting. Chalk up a win for sport meditation in discovering this! Since doing that exercise, I am more cognizant of how I am applying pressure to the pedals now.
So, if you think you might have interest in developing a mindfulness practice geared directly to sport performance improvement, this might be the book for you. If you are interested in a copy, here is the amazon link: