By Drew Heriman and Eric Martin
April 9, 2025

As a coach, you are asked to do a lot. In a day, you might be a teacher, mentor, and motivator. Additionally, you might be helping athletes learn about their sport for the first time or developing their already burgeoning love for the activity. With this much responsibility, it makes sense that coaches can feel a lack of motivation and become burned out. Unfortunately, the mental health of coaches tends to receive much less attention than that of athletes or parents. Because of this, all coaches should learn different methods that can help reduce stress and burnout and increase their overall well-being. One method that has been shown to support mental health for coaches is mindfulness training.

Mindfulness training is a practice that is centered on present-moment awareness and non-judgmental acceptance of experience (Labeau et al., 2024). Some mindfulness techniques include meditation, breathing exercises, and visualization. These techniques allow us to think about our thoughts and feelings as they are and try to be with these inner sensations without judgment and without automatically being controlled by them. The opposite of mindful behavior would be mindlessness, which can be described as simply going through the motions or responding automatically (Williams, 2020). Being in a mindless state can be dangerous for coaches, as it is a state of mind that is vulnerable to mistakes and can generate unnecessary difficulties due to your inattention (Williams, 2020).

Why is Mindfulness Important?

Coaches are an understudied population in sports even though they deal with just as many, if not more, stressors as their athletes (Labeau et al., 2024). Some of these stressors include pressure to succeed, excessive workload, a lack of job security, frequent travel, and isolation (Gilbert et al., 2024). Although coaches experience large amounts of stress, managing or regulating emotions can often take a backseat for coaches who feel like they need to put their team and athletes first. However, if stress and negative emotions are not dealt with, they can lead to negative long-term consequences, having an overall negative effect on coaching performance and long-term health.

Mindfulness training is one way to decrease the negative effects of stress and enhance the well-being and resilience of coaches (Labeau et al., 2024). Longshore (2015) reported that coaches who participated in mindfulness training were able to let go of their anxiety quickly and reported being “much less filled with anxiety over stupid things.” Additionally, coaches claimed they were able to increase their emotional control, balance, awareness, and expression. Coaches also approached problems (instead of avoiding them) and reported positive performance benefits and the ability to focus.  Lastly, Longshore (2015) found that these coaches had a better work/life balance, better relationships, and integrated mindfulness into life domains outside of coaching. Ultimately, the results from the study showed the positive effects that mindfulness training can have on not only coaches in the sport domain and their personal lives but also on their athletes and teams.  

Techniques to Apply Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness in sport contexts has been shown to be very effective. Most mindfulness training interventions in sport have been centered around athletes, although some researchers have developed programs specifically for coaches. In these programs, three common strategies have been used that you can integrate into your practice: meditation, mindful breathing, and the 3-second rule. These three strategies will be explored further.

Meditation

Meditation refers to self-regulation practices focusing on training attention and awareness to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control, thereby fostering mental well-being and personal development (Walsh & Shapiro, 2006). This definition includes working on and increasing specific capacities such as calmness, clarity, and concentration. In essence, meditation is a way to become aware of what we are thinking and feeling, accept those feelings, and choose to move forward to more productive thoughts.

Meditation has been shown to enhance concentration, stress management, and letting go of mistakes, as well as enhancing qualities experienced during peak performance. Meditation is an easy way to implement mindfulness training into your life, as many videos on the internet provide instructions on how to start practicing meditation. In a program focused on meditation, Baltzell and colleagues (2014) found that coaches who began meditating with their athletes experienced “an enhanced ability to accept and experience a different relationship with their emotions, both on and off the field”. In this study, the coaches followed the Meditation Mindfulness Training in Sport (MMTS) training, which is centered around four main components. These components are (1) open awareness capacity, which is the practice of being aware of experiences in the moment including one’s thoughts and breathing; (2) expression of caring thoughts for the team and self; (3) concentration exercises that focused on paying attention to the inhale and exhale of breathing; and (4) accepting negative mind-states, which was used to recall negative emotional moments in sport performance and to practice noticing and accepting the associated feelings.

In a follow–up of the MMTS program, Côté and colleagues (2019) found that coaches who practiced meditation could respond more optimally during difficult internal experiences on the field, making meditation a great intervention to enhance coaching performance. In essence, coaches can examine their decision-making and thought processes during performances and increase their focus and concentration to generate more positive thoughts and feelings about themselves, their athletes, and/or their choices.

Mindful Breathing Techniques

Mindful breathing techniques are similar to meditation as they both use breathing to target focus and attention. Meditation is, however, different because it is a broader practice that uses breathing in addition to other exercises to help generate calmness. Mindful breathing, on the other hand, is a specific technique where you focus your attention solely on your breath. These exercises can help return attention to present moments, which is especially helpful in stressful situations. Williams (2020) has listed steps to guide one through mindful breathing and I encourage you to think about how to integrate these into daily practice:

1. Sit comfortably with your legs uncrossed and arms at your sides or on your lap.
2. Close your eyes, if comfortable, and begin by bringing your awareness to your breathing.
3. Notice as your chest and stomach rise and fall with each passing breath.
4. You’re not trying to breathe in a special way; rather, just notice the sensations of the natural flow of your breath.
5. Notice where you feel your breath—in the chest, nostrils, throat, mouth—feel the expanding and relaxing with each breath.
6. If you realize you’re no longer noticing the current breath, gently and compassionately return your awareness to it.
7. Take a few moments simply to notice your breathing.
8. Before finishing, take a moment to notice any changes in your state since starting.

Mindful breathing can range from one to ten minutes, depending on your experience and what your goals are in utilizing it. Once you are practiced in mindful breathing, I encourage you to utilize and implement it before, during, and even after performance.

The 3-Second Rule

Once you have practiced meditation and mindful breathing, you can use your practice to your advantage by creating short exercises to use. This way, you can practice mindfulness even when you may not have a lot of time. The 3-second rule is a brief exercise that allows coaches to check in with how they are feeling in the heat of the moment. This method can be used before or during practice or competition, making it a quick and effective way to assess the focal areas of the mind and body, including the heart and breathing rate. In practice, the 3-second rule has you focus briefly on three different ways of becoming more focused on the task at hand. To do the 3-second rule exercise, follow these three prompts:

1. Take three seconds to mindfully notice your mind: What thoughts, feelings, and/or emotions are present?
2. Take three seconds to mindfully notice your body: Scan your whole body, observing what feels normal, different, loose, tight, hurt, or any other sensations you might experience.
3. Take three seconds to mindfully notice your heart rate and breathing: Try to become aware of the connection between your heart rate and breathing rate. For example, as you begin feeling anxious or having negative thoughts, you may begin to feel an increased heart rate or breathing pattern. Taking 3 seconds to recognize what your heart and breathing rate are and the connection they have allows you to notice, accept, and modify the thoughts and feelings that are attributed to them. 

Mindfulness is an important tool for coaches to be able to handle the inevitable stressors that coaching brings. Finding a technique that works for you can help improve relationships within your team, reduce stress levels and negative emotions, and increase your motivation. Utilizing one or more of these mindfulness-based Interventions is an effective way to increase your well-being and performance as a coach.

References

Baltzell, A., Caraballo, N., Chipman, K., & Hayden, L. (2014). A qualitative study of the mindfulness meditation training for sport: Division I female soccer players’ experience. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 8(3), 221–244. https://doi.org/10.1123/jcsp.2014-0030

Cote T, Baltzell A, Diehl R. A Qualitative Exploration of Division I Tennis Players Completing the Mindfulness Meditation Training for Sport 2.0 Program. Sport Psychologist. 2019;33(3):203-212. doi:10.1123/tsp.2017-0155

Crabtree, K., & Swainston, K. (2023). Acceptability of a wellbeing coaching intervention based on socio-cognitive mindfulness: A qualitative study of coaches’ views. International Coaching Psychology Review, 18(1), 21–33. https://doi-org.libproxy.boisestate.edu/10.53841/bpsicpr.2023.18.1.21

Gibert, A., Planas, A., & Torrents, C. (2024). Impact of mindfulness on football coaches: A mixed design. PLoS ONE, 19(10), 1–16. https://doi-org.libproxy.boisestate.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0306824

Lebeau, J.-C., Tremml, B., Perrone, K. M., & Judge, L. W. (2024). Enhancing wellbeing and resilience in coaches: The impact of a mindfulness based intervention. International Coaching Psychology Review, 19(1), 19–31. https://doi-org.libproxy.boisestate.edu/10.53841/bpsicpr.2024.19.1.19

Longshore, K., & Sachs, M. (2015). Mindfulness Training for Coaches: A Mixed-Method Exploratory Study. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 9(2), 116-137. Retrieved Nov 8, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.1123/jcsp.2014-0038

Walsh R, Shapiro SL. The meeting of meditative disciplines and Western psychology: a mutually enriching dialogue. Am Psychol. 2006;61(3):227-239. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.3.227

Williams, J. M. (2020). Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education (US). https://bsu.vitalsource.com/books/9781260390926