The purpose of this study was to examine effects of a Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) intervention on football performance, mindfulness, emotional regulation, performance anxiety and psychological illness (general anxiety, depression and emotional/physical fatigue) compared to an active control group over time. Effects of the intervention were measured through a quantitative survey at three measure points, pre and post (immediately after) the intervention together with a two months follow up. The participants were young elite football players (n = 44, Mage = 16.8, SD = 0.65) from the same senior high school. The participants were divided into four groups, one experiment group and one control group for each of the sexes. The intervention consisted of six sessions spread over six weeks, where the experiment group took part of the MAC intervention and the control group went through a group dynamic intervention. Mix-model ANOVA showed no significant difference in effect for any variable, thus no differences between the experiment group and the control group. This suggest that MAC has no additional effects on football performance and psychological illness compared to a group dynamics intervention.

For the past three decades performance development in sport has been steered by traditional Psychological Skills Training (PST) programmes. However, in the last decade, the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach to performance development in sport has been introduced. To date, there is limited research on the MAC approach and there are currently no published studies in South Africa. The goal of this study was to explore the participant’s experiences of the MAC programme with reference to what they learnt through the programme, how they applied their learning to their swimming and how they transferred their learning to their lives. This study is an Interpretive Phenomenological view of five adolescent swimmers (two female and three male) at the High Performance Centre (hpc), in South Africa (SA). The participants partook in a one-day swimmingspecific MAC programme and thereafter, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. An interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used for analysing the data gained from the interviews. The findings indicate that the participants had experiences which were consistent, inconsistent or unique in relation to the literature review. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

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. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

This research study took place at the High Performance Centre (hpc) at the University of Pretoria (UP) in South Africa (SA). The sport psychologists/sports counselors at the hpc mainly deliver performance development services to the athletes. The sport psychology services at the hpc are conducted to the athletes via the Psychological Skills Training (PST) approach and Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach. These two approaches are individualistic in nature and the aim of my study was to move away from a more traditional individualistic perspective to an ecological perspective that takes into consideration other role players such as sport scientists. This was achieved by developing a sport science specific MAC programme for the sport scientists, which was facilitated through experiential learning. The goal of the MAC programme was to explore the sport scientists’ experiences with reference to what they discovered and how they applied their learning. Eight in depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four sport scientists at the hpc after their participation in the programme. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the semi-structured interviews. The findings were mainly related to difficulties and advantages that the sport scientists experienced when they applied the MAC principles. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted