Meditation for Athletes

Training the mind is as important as physical training. Meditation is an extremely important tool for training the mind. Why should we meditate? Where do we start? Let us find out….

Why meditation?

Most of the athletes I know, especially teen athletes work very hard in physical training, but devote no time to train their minds. Professional players have full time sports psychologists at their disposal but most of us and especially kids cannot afford that privilege. Also for kids, the coach is usually too busy training a big group so he hardly has the time to attend to every child and his problems personally. Growth spurt and hormonal changes in kids make them very vulnerable to negative influences, emotions and beliefs and hence it becomes extremely important to channelize all the energy in the right direction. Hence mental training is important for an athlete to becoming calmer, stronger and tougher on the match field. Meditation is the simplest and one of the most effective ways to train the mind.

Myths about meditation

Before I started meditating few years back, I always used to think about meditation as a sadhu with a long white beard sitting in a jungle, motionless and fully concentrating for days together. Knowing myself of being extremely distracted during my academic years, this visual image drove me further away from meditation. I always said, “This is not my cup of tea”

But when I started meditation on a regular basis, I realized that it has nothing to do with concentration. Concentration requires effort, whereas meditation is not about making any effort. It’s a flow, the art of letting go. 

Another common perception about meditation is that, it makes you complacent. Again that’s not true. You can fully have very focussed goals in life and continue to strive for them. Meditation will just make the goal clearer and the process of reaching there more enjoyable. 

Meditation is not quantifiable. You cannot actually measure the progress on an everyday basis. But over a period of few sessions, you will start feeling the difference. 

How does this then apply to sports?

Remember the time when you yourself or your parent or coach was telling you, “Don’t think about the score/result, just focus on the current point, just CONCENTRATE”. This seems easy for the other person, but you knew how tough it was. The pressure gets on to us. 

After regular practice of meditation, you will get trained in observing your thoughts (could be about the score, the result, the tiredness, a bad call by the referee) and then bring the mind back to the present moment (which could be the current point, strategy, tactic). In our parents or coaches words, it is called ‘Focus’ and ‘Concentration’. But in regular meditation we call it ‘Mindfulness’. Instead of resisting thoughts, meditation teaches us to observe them and then come back to the ‘NOW’. This is how meditation works and helps, not only athletes, but anyone for anything.

How to start?

Thanks to technology, you don’t need to go to a monastery to learn meditation. Start by downloading a meditation app on your smart phone. Now all you need is your phone, head phones and 10-15minutes of your time every day. ‘Headspace app’ (over 62million downloads) and ‘Calm app’ (over 40million downloads) are the best available apps to start and practice meditation. After a few free trial sessions, you can purchase their subscription at a very nominal price. I personally use the ‘Headspace’ app and strongly recommend it to everyone.

Watch my video on this topic by going to the link below-

Like any other skill, meditation too requires time and practice to learn. Do not expect immediate results. The app informs you the run streak of continuous days meditated, average minutes and total minutes meditated, so you can try and build on those. It is like going to a gym, muscles do not pop up overnight, it takes dedicated work in the gym. Meditation for kids can be introduced as early as 7 or 8 years of age. Parents have to make them understand why it is important and its benefits. In the Indian education system, we are not taught meditation and mindfulness. But today many schools in England, Scotland, Finland, USA, Netherlands and Australia have meditation as part of their curriculum. Maybe one day, it will form a part of our education curriculum as well. As for adults who have never practiced meditation, it is never too late to start. Once you start, you will eagerly look forward to that ‘ME’ time every single day. It’s a time when you are free from all the thoughts and worries. I am always excited about the time I have to meditate. I just wonder sometimes, how much difference it would have made had I got introduced to this practice early on in my life!!

In today’s competitive scenario, where every athlete trains hard, the only difference becomes the mental edge. And meditation can make that difference. 

Comments, feedback and experiences are welcome.

Please note- the apps mentioned above are my personal recommendations and I have nothing to gain from these app companies. Readers can browse through the play store to make a choice for a meditation app which suits them best.  

Amit Gajria

WSF Certified Squash Coach.

Mumbai, India.