Theoretical and Empirical Developments of the Mindfulness.pdfVIP

Journal of Clinical Sports Psychology, 2009, 4, 291-302 © 2009 Human Kinetics,  Inc. Theoretical and Empirical Developments of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) Approach to Performance Enhancement Zella E. Moore Manhattan College As long as athletes strive to attain optimal performance states and consistently reach high performance goals, psychological interventions will be used to assist in the development of skill and the maintenance of performance. In the pursuit of these goals, newer evidence-driven models based on mindfulness- and acceptance-based approaches have been designed to achieve these ends. Based upon questionable efficacy data for traditional psychological skills training procedures that emphasize reduction or control of internal processes, mindfulness- and acceptance-based approaches develop skills of nonjudging mindful awareness, mindful attention, and experiential acceptance to aid in the pursuit of valued goals. The most formalized and researched mindfulness- and acceptance-based approach within sport psychol- ogy is the manualized Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) protocol. In the 8 years since the MAC was first developed and presented, and the 5 years since the first publication on the protocol, the MAC program has accumulated a continually growing empirical base for both its underlying theory and interven- tion efficacy as a performance enhancement intervention. This article reviews the empirical and theoretical foundations of the mindfulness- and acceptance-based approaches in general, and MAC in particular; reviews the accumulated empiri- cal findings in support of the MAC approach for performance enhancement; and present