Keep Calm and Gymnastics On

KIN 530: Home Stretch (stay up, stay up)

Wow!

What a whirl wind it has been completing the literature review. To be honest, I absolutely loved the process. I  enjoyed the writing, even though it was the longest paper of my life! I feel like I am more prepared to move forward.

As I progressed through the review, I was able to define my research. I have chosen to assess mindfulness interventions in sport psychology, to determine the best methods of delivery with athletes. This review clearly defined mindfulness, and the potential benefits to athletes. It also focused on the amount of mindfulness training necessary to sustain any potential benefits to mental performance. The research methods were evaluated, and ways to collect data assessed. It became clear that it would be a challenge to measure mindfulness effects on performance directly, but one could create a method to measure mindfulness along with other psychological factors, or measure increases in mindfulness.

It was valuable to review and understand the difference between “Dispositional Mindfulness” and “Mindfulness” with athletes. There is a substantial amount of data, and information regarding mindfulness interventions with athletes of all levels. In the literature, most mindfulness interventions are 5-8 week programs, and include basic mindfulness exercises, which evolve to more complex exercises, with movement, over time.

I am excited to move forward to the next part of the process, it will be amazing to develop a delivery method for the research. The interesting part of the process was determining the need for future research within this topic. It will be fun to work towards the finish line, and add to the research in this field.

There is one validated survey, the Mindfulness Inventory for Sport (MIS). In most cases, the researcher also includes the non-sport specific questionnaires as well. From the review, it seems that the best way to collect data and received follow-up feedback is through mixed methods. This way the participants can share their experiences clearly. The best mindfulness protocol for sport seems to be the MMTS 2.0 (Baltzell & Summers, 2018). I plan to use this protocol to proceed with my project.

 

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