Mindfulness
Does mindfulness training help college rowers sleep and perform?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Female college rowers who took a mindfulness course reported better well-being, sleep and coping, and rowed a test distance faster, while a comparison group of teammates did not show these changes.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Quasi-randomised controlled pre-post design: rowers assigned to an 8-session MBSR course or no-treatment control partly by schedule availability
- N
- N=27 · 27 rowers (15 MBSR, 12 control); fewer in some analyses, e.g. actigraphy on nine MBSR and seven control participants, and three missing the ergometer retest
- Population
- Women on a Division I NCAA collegiate rowing team in the US
- Outcome
- Composite psychological well-being, sleep quality (PSQI, sleepiness, actigraphy), athletic coping skills, mindfulness, and 6,000 m ergometer completion time
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Key findings
Within the MBSR group, mindfulness, a combined well-being score, daytime sleepiness, coping skills and sleep efficiency measured by wrist monitor all improved, while the control group did not change significantly on these measures. Self-reported sleep quality was the one outcome formally tested as a group-by-time interaction, and it favoured MBSR. MBSR rowers also finished the ergometer test faster than before, with a large within-group effect, but this speed gain was not related to how much their mindfulness, well-being, coping or sleep improved. Better sleep quality did not explain the links between mindfulness gains and well-being or coping.
Methodology
Twenty-seven women from one college rowing team were split, partly by who could attend class times, into a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) group of 15 and a control group of 12 who got nothing extra. The MBSR group attended eight shortened 75-minute classes and was asked to meditate at least ten minutes before bed each night. Before and after, athletes completed questionnaires on mindfulness, mood, stress, sleep and coping, wore wrist sleep monitors, and did a 6,000 m rowing-machine test as part of normal training.
Limitations
With only 27 athletes, assignment partly based on schedule rather than chance, and no active or sham control, the gains could reflect group meetings, expectations or differences between those who could attend. Most conclusions rest on finding a significant change in one group and not the other, rather than on testing whether the two groups changed by different amounts, so the evidence for a true group difference is weaker than it looks. Sleep monitoring had usable data for only nine MBSR and seven control athletes, the second rowing test happened mid-course, and all participants were women from a single team. The course was also shortened and lacked the usual silent retreat, so results may not match standard MBSR.
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