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

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.