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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1556404
This article is part of the Research Topic Decoding Endurance Performance: From Theory to Practice View all 3 articles
Effects of Group Mindfulness Intervention on High-Level Distance Runners: A Quasi-Experimental Study
Provisionally accepted- 1 Hungarian University of Sports Science, Budapest, Hungary
- 2 Eszterházy Károly College, Eger, Heves, Hungary
This study explored the impact of the Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement (MSPE) program, adapted for elite distance runners. Twenty Hungarian national and international-level athletes participated in a quasi-experimental design. The experimental group (n = 10) completed a six-week MSPE intervention, while the control group (n = 10) received no mental training.Psychological constructs, including flow, competitive anxiety, mindfulness, and emotion regulation, were assessed pre-and post-intervention. Results showed significant improvements in the experimental group across most variables, particularly flow and cognitive anxiety, with no changes in the control group. These findings highlight the effectiveness of a group-based mindfulness program in enhancing mental well-being and performance in elite runners. The scalable, structured format offers a practical alternative to traditional sports psychology approaches for high-performance athletes.
Keywords: mindfulness, Distance running, sport psychology, performance, Mental Health
Received: 06 Jan 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kelemen, Tóth, Benczenleitner and Tóth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Bence Kelemen, Hungarian University of Sports Science, Budapest, Hungary
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