I have combined my academic knowledge[1], sports experience[2] and personal mindfulness and compassion practice[3] to develop an 8-session course on ‘Improving Sports Performance through Mindfulness and Compassion’. The course can be delivered either face-to-face or online over 8 sessions (typically one per week with a gap before the final session to embed learning). The course costs £240 per person (group rates are available on request).
Interest in mindfulness has grown over the past few years, but it’s use in sports is still relatively new. It is, however, an approach that has been used by elite athletes to help improve their performance. For example, it is being used at Southampton Football academy, as well as professional NBA basketball teams in America.
I do not focus exclusively on meditation training, although I do introduce some meditation practices. It is more about how to apply mindfulness and compassion to your sports training and competition to optimise your performance.
Elite athletes and coaches emphasise the importance of the mental aspect of sporting success. Often serious sportspeople often train with similar intensity, but what is interpreted as giving people the competitive edge is mental attitude.
The course will show you how using and practising mindfulness and compassion can help you:
- Improve focus and concentration
- Have better bodily and emotional awareness
- Be able to get over mistakes more quickly
- Deal better emotionally with difficulties such as injury
- Understand your motivations so you can adapt your training to be more enjoyable
- Enable you to adapt to changes in the moment during competition so you can act with composure.
- Manage stressful experiences such as performance anxiety.
The focus is on how you can use mindfulness and compassion practices to help improve your performance, wellbeing and enjoyment of your sport. Here is a short video introducing the course.
If you would like to try a short taster session on mindfulness for sport before committing to do this 8-week course, take a look at my Mindfulness for Sport: Essentials course.
Get in touch via the contact page if you’d like to sign up for a course or ask any questions.
Dr. Kris Chapman, Mindfulkindfulness
“The course content, structure and delivery have been nothing short of superb. I feel my understanding of both mindfulness and what it is to practice a sport purposefully have been enriched through the expert guidance of Dr Chapman.”
“The handbook is AMAZING, a valuable resource, full of great material, your own and the references/people’s you refer to.”
“I have already seen substantial benefits to both my performance in new PBs as well as my overall wellbeing and renewed appreciation for exercise.”
“As I had little prior knowledge about mindfulness and never used it in practice, I feel like I’ve really learnt something valuable. Learning all the different practices have helped as it means I can incorporate mindfulness into my daily routine easily as there are lots of varied practices, some which I can use whilst training and take up no more time. I definitely feel like I’ve started using it more and more throughout the weeks of the course and now use it often during my runs and training, and sometimes just at the beginning or end of my day.”
“It was useful to be introduced to the concepts of mindfulness and compassion in sports by a person with a track record of high level sports performance especially in martial arts which have a strong component of the mind/spirit, not just physicality. I enjoyed the combination of practical application and theory, including the material provided with all the links and references…”
[1] PhD in social anthropology focussing on Japanese martial arts, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
[2] 2nd dan Shotokan karate, 1st dan Shukokai karate, 1st dan Heki-ryu Insai-ha kyudo (Japanese archery).
[3] I am a qualified Mindfulness teacher, having completed a Level 4 qualification (foundation degree) on Integrating Mindfulness and Compassion in Professional Practice with Mindfulness UK.