So before dismissing it, consider what if mindfulness had nothing to do with sitting still, emptying your mind, or reaching your inner calm? What if it had everything to do with where you direct your attention during competition and whether you can bring it back when you begin to overthink the previous play or future outcome?

That reframe changes everything because when it comes to sports, mindfulness can be as simple as having intentional attention on the present moment. It is not limited to a spiritual practice, it is also a performance skill and one that can be trained, measured, and applied directly to how you compete.

What Mindfulness Actually Is

Mindfulness in sport is not always about reaching a sense of calm before a big game, sitting in silence, controlling your thoughts, or eliminating anxiety. Athletes who attempt to “just relax” before a pressure-filled competition need to know that fighting your mental state rarely produces the result you’re looking for. Mindfulness actually targets something simpler and more specific, attention control. Where is your mind right now? Is it on the current play, or has it drifted to what could happen if you lose, the last mistake you made, or the outside noise? When it does drift, because it will, how quickly can you bring it back?

Mindfulness practice emphasizes present-moment awareness, acceptance and has the potential to improve attention control and emotional regulation within athletes. It is important to note that mindfulness does not ask you to control what you think. It asks you to notice when your mind is distracted from the task at hand and redirect it to the current moment, because that is the most important place for an athlete to be in when in competition. This distinction is important because it’s the reason athletes who approach it as a means of control struggle, while those who use it as an attention skill see results.

The Evidence Athletes Should Know

The evidence on mindfulness and athletic performance has grown significantly in recent years and will continue to grow!

A meta-analysis done this year examined mindfulness practice and sport-specific performance. The study found a significant positive effect across genders, competitive levels, and skill types. This wasn’t a finding limited to one sport or one population, the positive effects held strong and means the research is telling us something universal about what present-moment awareness does for performance, regardless of the athlete.

A 2025 meta-analysis on mindfulness training in high-level athletes specifically found significant improvements in focus, emotional regulation, and competitive anxiety management. These aren’t outcomes that don’t translate, focus and emotional regulation are directly tied to execution under pressure and in the moments that separate athletes and take their game to the next level.

The connection between mindfulness and resilience adds another layer. Research published in 2025 found that mental resilience and mindfulness are meaningfully correlated in athletes and promote mental health and the ability to cope with stress in chaotic environments. Athletes who can develop mindfulness skills are improving their in-game focus and building a broader psychological foundation that holds up under the collective stress of a full season.

Specifically for athletes who may struggle with anxiety before or during competition, mindfulness functions as a buffer between the brain’s diagnosis of a situation as threatening and the anxiety response that follows. Athletes who practice their own mindfulness have lower competitive anxiety even in high-pressure situations. This doesn’t come because the pressure disappears, but because the space between the situation and the response gets wider.

What It Actually Looks Like In Competition

Stick with me here because when I talk with most athletes, actually being able to apply this in competition is where they get lost.

During competition, an athlete’s mind can get pulled in three broad directions. Backwards, into the mistake that just happened, the play that should have gone differently, the shot that didn’t fall. Forwards, into the outcome, the scoreboard, what losing would mean, what the coach is thinking. The present, into what is actually happening right now, the only place where performance can occur.

Mindfulness is the ability to notice when your attention has drifted backwards or forwards, and to redirect your thinking to the present without judgment. Not with frustration, not with self-criticism, just a quiet acknowledgment that the mind wandered, and a deliberate return to now.

Now, what does that look like in practice? As a former basketball player, it is easy for me to picture this within that sport. If you are an athlete that plays a different sport, picture yourself in this situation within the means of that sport!

Whenever I caught myself thinking about the turnover I just had, the bad shot I just took, or most of the time it was because I just got scored on. I would catch myself in that moment thinking about the backwards or forwards, touch my wrist tape, and that’s what brought me back to the present. I am a firm believer that not all athletes can be brought back to the present in the same way. The most popular way is taking that breath and moving on, for me it was a physical touch. I wore wrist tape in practice and in games and rubbed it until I was brought back to where my feet were. Some athletes mutter a phrase, nothing too long, that they can say to themselves in order to regain focus. When I was first advised of finding my own “ritual,” I was told about Australian rules footballer Matt Rowell, who picks up grass and chews on it to ground himself. Now, it does not have to be to that extreme, but many athletes can find benefit in finding their own way to use mindfulness in competition. This is something that can take time and exploration and can even change, but I also feel like it is important to stick to one or two rituals. Having multiple outlets can trick the brain into thinking that they're not working, it is important to be consistent.

How Athletes Can Train It

Now that you’ve heard the science and can picture what it looks like in competition, the most important thing is for athletes to know how to train their mindfulness skill. Athletes can train their mindfulness just like their swing, their jump-shot, or their running technique, it gets better with deliberate practice and can become a natural thing you do. For athletes here are four different techniques that you can be intentional about during your next training session:

The body scan check-in. Before competition, during timeouts, while on the bench, or during natural breaks in play, briefly scan your physical experience: Focus on how your feet set on the ground, how you are breathing, and any tension you may be holding in through areas like your shoulders, jaw, fists, etc. This takes five to ten seconds and anchors your attention in the present physical moment before the mind has a chance to drift during these breaks. It is the simplest mindfulness entry point for athletes who have never practiced it, and it works because it gives the mind something immediate to concentrate on.

The anchor. Find an anchor to use as your reset tool, taking a breath, touching wrist tape, saying a phrase. Something you can turn to when you notice your attention has drifted to a bad play, to the scoreboard, or to what a coach might be thinking. Using breath is easier for athletes, to do so return to two or three deliberate, slow breaths before re-engaging with the competition. This works best when you are breathing through your stomach rather than the chest because it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing the physical symptoms of anxiety while simultaneously giving the mind a clear, present anchor to return to. It’s quick, requires no equipment, and works in any sport at any level. If using a physical touch, focus on how the texture feels along your fingertips. Ensure it is something you can have access to at any time during competition and doesn’t interfere with your play. For those using a phrase or word, use something quick and repeat it with intention. Reciting it quickly for the sake of just doing it doesn’t work the same compared to if you are saying it with intention. Using a phrase or word requires consistency and can take time and effort to train. The brain needs to learn through repetition that the phrase is a trigger to come back to the present moment.

The noting technique. When a distracting thought appears, “I shouldn’t have done that,” “what if I mess up again,” “we’re going to win/lose this” simply label it as “thinking.” Don’t fight it, don’t analyze it, don’t follow it and let it lead to more distraction. Just name it and let it pass through. This is the core of non-judgmental awareness applied to competition and is the technique that most directly addresses the self-critical loop that follows mistakes. The thought doesn’t disappear, but by labeling it, you stop being controlled by it.

Practice the redirect, not the absence. The goal is never to have a clear mind because that is almost impossible while you are in the middle of workouts, practices, or games. The goal is to notice when the mind drifts and to redirect faster. The most effective way to build this skill is to deliberately practice it in training. After a mistake, take a deliberate pause before the next rep. Not to dwell or correct, but to practice the act of noticing, resetting, and refocusing. Athletes who build this habit in low-stakes practice environments find it available to them when the pressure is there.

For Coaches: Building Mindfulness Into Your Program

The most immediate thing coaches can do costs nothing, requires no curriculum, and you are probably already doing it. Simply normalize the language and use words like “focus,” “attention,” “be here,” and “next play” are mindfulness concepts and most coaches already use them without recognizing it. Making them deliberate, consistent, and heard are the first steps toward building a culture of present-moment awareness.

From there, design brief attention-reset moments into practice structure. A five-second pause after a mistake before the next rep. A deliberate focus cue before a set piece, a free throw, or a penalty situation. These are mindfulness interventions and don’t need to be labeled as such to be effective.

For coaches who want to go further, the research supports structured mindfulness programs. An 8-week mindfulness program delivered to elite athletes produced meaningful improvements in wellbeing and performance across multiple measures. The delivery model was simple, have short and consistent weekly sessions over two months. This is not a major time investment relative to the return it can bring to your athletes.

Mindfulness adoption in sport remains low despite strong and growing evidence of its effectiveness. Coaches who normalize it early in language, in practice design, in how they respond to mistakes, give their athletes a genuine competitive advantage that most programs are not yet developing. The window to be ahead is still open!

The Bottom Line

Mindfulness in sport isn’t always about the yoga mat or the meditation app. It’s also about deliberate attention, specifically, the ability to direct it on purpose, notice when it drifts, and bring it back without judgment. That is a skill and like every other skill an athlete develops, it gets sharper with intentional practice.

The present moment is where athletes can make something happen. Every shot, every rep, every decision happens now, not in the replay of the last one or the anticipation of the next. The athletes who perform most consistently and effectively under pressure are not the ones whose minds are clear and quiet, they are the ones who have trained the art of redirection.

About the Author: Austin Lewis is a former college basketball player and first-year Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate student with a background in psychology. This Substack explores the intersection of sports, mental performance, and mental health advocacy. This article is part of an ongoing series by the author, discussing the current happenings in sport psychology.

May was mental health awareness month and in the sports world, it allows us to bring up the conversation that asks — what are professional leagues doing to protect and support athletes and their mental health?

While this discussion is not singular to one league, the National Football League (NFL) is taking action on it after two active players tragically took their own lives four months apart. Rondale Moore, a wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, was 25 years old when he passed away in February 2026. He is remembered by his teammates and coaches as “special” and “a better person off the field than on it”. Before his death, he was working his way back from a knee injury that had kept him on the sideline for the past two years. Marshawn Kneeland, a defensive end for the Dallas Cowboys, was only 24 years old when he passed in November 2025. Marshawn was known for having a valuable work ethic and having a “huge and contagious smile”. Days before his death, Marshawn scored a touchdown in a game against the Arizona Cardinals.

While these are only two recent examples, the culture in sports has been built on decades of “playing through it”. Celebrating athletes that seem to never struggle and berating the ones that do. This culture carries and encourages suffering in silence outside of the sport.

Unfortunately, there are too many stories similar to Marshawn and Rondale. With May being mental health awareness month, it is important for current athletes and coaches to understand that the mental side of the game does not always need to revolve around their in-game performance. It is important to check on the human, not just the athlete.

How the NFL Took Action

At the most recent annual owners meeting, franchise owners approved the most significant expansion of mental health services in the league’s history. All 32 teams are now required to have a full-time licensed mental health clinician at their facilities. The new policy also expands the resources to players placed on the injury-reserve (IR), where over 500 players were placed during the 2025 season. Rondale Moore had been on the IR the past two seasons. When a player experiences a serious injury and is placed on the IR, a routine is broken, daily connections with teammates and coaches are different, purpose and identity can be lost. The new policy acknowledges this isolation as a mental health risk. The new policy also expands its behavioral health network to cover players families as well.

Prior to this policy, the last time the NFL addressed mental health was in 2019 when the league required teams to have a part-time clinician available 8-12 hours a week.

This is progress.

Mental Health in Other Leagues

The NFL is not the only professional league taking steps to integrate mental health resources within their policies. Other leagues have put together their own respective policies, so let’s examine.

National Basketball Association (NBA)

The NBA has emerged as a frontrunner in the mental health game when it comes to professional sports leagues. It started with the voices of the players, Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan have both been open about their battles with anxiety and depression throughout their playing career. Since 2019, the league has made movements with their “Mind Health” initiative which requires all 30 teams to staff a therapist or psychologist along with a psychiatrist. According to findings from The Athletic, some teams have gone beyond those requirements. The Lakers, 76ers, Wizards, and Heat carry more than 3 psychologists, while the Mavericks and Suns staff a sports psychologist. Many of these resources are also extended to coaches and other employees of teams.

While this is all progressive by the league, there are significant gaps. These policies get blurry when it intersects with the “business” side of professional sports. Once a player is cut, waived, or released, there is no requirement for a mental health evaluation, no follow-ups, no transitional support. The mental health resources provided by the team are only accessible if you are on the roster.

Major League Baseball (MLB)

The MLB requires all teams to provide access to a licensed psychologist in a private space. The league also provides players with a 24/7 confidential helpline and training in mental health crises for coaches and trainers. The MLB Players Association (MLBPA) has also introduced its own mental health and wellness program, separate of the teams. The MLBPA expands its services to players who are currently or were formerly in the minor leagues.

Boston Red Sox outfielder, Jarren Duran, has arguably been the largest mental health advocate in the MLB. His discussion revolving his suicide attempt during the 2022 season, shed some light on the struggle players face when “underperforming”.

The limitations with the MLB’s policy is that it is essentially on a voluntary basis. Baseball being a less progressive sport and enduring a longer season that has limited off-days, players are less likely to seek any form of treatment. However, some MLB teams carry a mental performance coach in their dugout during the games. These coaches can be essential to improving player performance on the field and providing a support system for players that may struggle during the 162 game season.

National Hockey League (NHL)

The NHL is unique with its players assistance program that has been running since 1996. This program provides support for players and their families and covers mental health, substance abuse, and addiction. This program allows players to receive specific treatment and is completely confidential. The NHL is also distinct with the implementation of its “First Line” initiative. First launching in 2024, this program provides players with training to recognize mental health concerns in themselves and in their teammates. This is led by a former player, Dr. Jay Harrison, and has received positive feedback that includes reduced stigma, greater awareness, and increased comfortability when discussing mental health.

However, the NHL is similar to the MLB in that it is on a voluntary basis. Meaning that players who need it the most, might not actually engage with it. Another concern is hidden; While a player is in the players assistance program, they continue to get paid - even if they have to leave the team to address these concerns. While a positive at first, it can create issues regarding a team’s payroll.

Progress, but not Perfection

The NFL, a league that generated over $20 billion in revenue and is by far the most profitable league in the United States, requires teams to employ 1 clinician for 53 players. While initially a win for mental health in a league that prides itself on physical toughness, there are some obvious drawbacks. Here are some things that these clinicians are responsible for: Individual therapy for players dealing with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, grief, trauma, pressure relating to performance, etc. Crisis response and possible group education efforts. Return-to-play assessments for players coming back from injury. Consultation with coaches and trainers, support for players’ families. Then there is the ongoing concern with CTE, something significant to the sport of football and cannot be diagnosed while the players are alive. On top of that, support for coaches and other staff with their own specific concerns.

If a player gets physically injured, there is a full team of doctors, surgeons, coaches, trainers, other specialists that will work to get that player physically healthy. While a player in mental distress is provided only one clinician by the team. While it is a start, it is not where it should be.

Where Does the Standard Fall?

One thing to positively note is that every league has made an advancement in how athletes see, discuss, and address mental health. It will always start with the players, progress will continue to be made as long as players continue to become more open and comfortable with discussing their mental health.

When we ask ourselves what the standard should be, we can quickly take a look at how we treat physical health and we might find the answer. This is a connection between all leagues, the concern for a physical injury far exceeds the concern for a mental health issue. Less resources, less precautions, less evaluation, and less treatment with more stigma and more “play through it”. Yet, a mental injury is just as serious as a physical one. Common mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are strongly linked to drops in performance and even physical injury occurrences. These are only two common illnesses and doesn’t consider everything else that falls under the mental health issues umbrella.

While I can appreciate the NFL and other leagues for taking their respective steps, it falls onto the players, coaches, and the culture of sports. Considering the young lives lost in Rondale Moore and Marshawn Kneeland, I believe they deserved more than a part-time clinician.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text.

About the Author: Austin Lewis is a former college basketball player and first-year Clinical Mental Health Counseling graduate student with a background in psychology. This Substack explores the intersection of sports, mental performance, and mental health advocacy. This article is part of an ongoing series by the author, discussing the current happenings in sport psychology.