| Within professional psychology data has recently accumulated suggesting that traditional efforts to change or control thoughts and emotions have limits in their effectiveness (Roemer & Orsillo, 2002; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002). Similarly, within applied sport psychology, empirical support for the efficacy of traditional approaches for performance enhancement has been equivocal (Moore, 2003). Alternative intervention options have recently been proposed useful for the enhancement of athletic performance (Gardner and Moore, in press). The purpose of this study was to preliminarily investigate the potential efficacy of a Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment based performance enhancement strategy with collegiate athletes (MAC: Gardner and Moore, in press). Eleven field hockey and volleyball athletes participated in a 7 week MAC protocol, and were compared to a control group of 7 same sport athletes. Non-parametric analysis of data offers preliminary support for MAC as a strategy for enhancing the athletic performance of collegiate athletes, and is a promising new model requiring further research. In addition, results indicate that the presence or absence of subsyndromal clinical issues may be an important contributing factor in performance enhancement efforts, a novel finding of potentially great significance for the future development of applied sport psychology. |
