Performance development of adolescent swimmers : a Mindfulness - Acceptance - Commitment (MAC) approach

Abstract

For the past three decades performance development in sport has been steered by traditional Psychological Skills Training (PST) programmes. However, in the last decade, the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach to performance development in sport has been introduced. To date, there is limited research on the MAC approach and there are currently no published studies in South Africa. The goal of this study was to explore the participant’s experiences of the MAC programme with reference to what they learnt through the programme, how they applied their learning to their swimming and how they transferred their learning to their lives. This study is an Interpretive Phenomenological view of five adolescent swimmers (two female and three male) at the High Performance Centre (hpc), in South Africa (SA). The participants partook in a one-day swimmingspecific MAC programme and thereafter, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. An interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used for analysing the data gained from the interviews. The findings indicate that the participants had experiences which were consistent, inconsistent or unique in relation to the literature review.