Abstract:
This study explored the subjective interpretations of five adolescent athletes who
experienced a sport-specific version of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment
(MAC) approach. The MAC approach is an alternative sport psychology intervention
to more traditional control-driven approaches, such as Psychological Skills Training
(PST). An in-depth qualitative study was conducted at the High Performance Centre
(hpc) of the University of Pretoria (UP). The sport-specific MAC programme was
developed for the sport of athletics. The programme was facilitated to five
adolescent athletes who participate in the sport of athletics. Semi-structured
interviews were conducted after the participants experienced the programme. The
interviews were based on written reflections provided by participants during the
programme. The research position for this study was phenomenology, and
specifically Interpretive Phenomenology (IP). Interpretive Phenomenological
Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the material. The results revealed that there was
only one theme that was common to all five participants. Furthermore, the results
portrayed diversity amongst the participant experiences and subjectivity in their
interpretations of the MAC approach. The results displayed how some themes are
consistent with MAC-related literature, and how other themes contradict the
literature. Additionally, some themes have not been reported in MAC literature
before. Thus, the study contributed to the expansion of literature on the MAC
approach.
