Stress is essential to stimulate adaptations. Hard training is necessary, which is often unpleasant and has some risk of injury. The Stress and Coping Model describes how our beliefs about potential threats or damage, and whether we are capable of handling these, play a major role in how our body responds to training and injury. Potential physiological mechanisms for this phenomenon include activation of the sympathetic nervous system, releasing adrenaline: preventing relaxation and diverting energy from other bodily functions such as digestion or immune system. Secondly, chronic cortisol stress hormone levels impair immunity, insulin response, memory and increase the risk of anxiety or depression. The effects of this are that we absorb less nutrients from our food for recovery, are more likely to get ill, insulin resistance will impair our ability to build and maintain muscle, and we can create a negative feedback loop where anxiety impairs recovery and performance, which then leads to further feelings of anxiety! While there remain many factors within our control, meditation and cultivating an attitude of mindful acceptance can be incredibly beneficial in handling the stresses and challenges athletes face. We can establish positive instead of negative feedback loops where athlete’s respond calmly and objectively to stress and setbacks, allowing them to handle these situations better, which then trains their mind and improves their self-belief to respond in the future.

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This is supported by research that made participants perform a stressful test followed by either meditation or a general relaxation routine, while measuring cortisol and testosterone levels. They found that the meditation group ended with reduced cortisol hormone and greater testosterone levels, but this wasn’t because they experienced less stress from the test, because their hormone levels were similar immediately following the test. The difference was that the meditation allowed them to handle the stress better and bring their hormones to more favourable levels. This study also highlights the hormonal benefits of meditation including increased testosterone, growth hormone, oestrogen, insulin, and reduced cortisol. By contrast, some research has found some forms of meditation in fact increase the cortisol response to stress. However, this type of meditation, known as transcendental, focuses on ‘eliminating stressful experiences’ whereas mindful-acceptance meditation trains us to change our response to stress instead of trying to avoid it.  This highlights that different forms of meditation result in different adaptations. The capability to handles stress and maintain hormonal balance can help athletes adapt to training.

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There is evidence that meditation may improve sleep quality. There are numerous benefits of sleep including recovery, brain function, hypertrophy, fat loss, muscular endurance and injury risk. Sleep can be considered paying back the ‘sleep debt’ that we accumulate while awake. Time spent meditating may increasing this payback. This theory is supported by the evidence that people who meditate for long periods sleep less than those who perform shorter meditations. Some of the numerous proposed factors that improve sleep quality are listed below:​

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• Increased Melatonin secretion in the pineal gland, promoting wakefulness in the morning and afternoon and encourages regular circadian rhythms.

• Reduced Stress and parasympathetic activation, promoting relaxation.

• Reduces sleep pressure through increased Theta & Alpha waves, this allows us to fall asleep more gradually and reduced the time we need to spend in non-REM sleep.

• Greater payback of sleep debt during early sleep because of reduced sleep pressure. Meaning we sleep more efficiently.

• Increased REM sleep due to requiring less non-REM sleep because meditation increases delta wave activity during deep sleep.

• Practicing meditation increases gamma wave activity which may encourage late sleep to be more like meditation., The brain activity of alpha neurons during meditation has been described as like early sleep, although it should be noted that meditation differs from sleep because the individual remains alert.

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A second potential mechanism may be that meditation counteracts the negative effects from insufficient sleep. Restricting sleep to five hours reduces alertness and reaction times, but meditation training reduced sleepiness and improved performance. This may be due to the practice of concentration increasing dopamine levels, which regulates blood flow to the areas of the brain associated with focus, namely the prefrontal and parietal association cortex.

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Practical Recommendations

Despite the potential benefits, researchers report common obstacles to meditation including missing days, lack of commitment, lack of meditation leader and being too busy. To overcome these obstacles, we should remind ourselves of the positive effects of meditation that justify the investment of time and effort. There may be a perception that we need to spend time and money on travel and retreats to create the perfect conditions to meditation. However, even short periods of meditation can be beneficial, and mindfulness can be practiced anywhere, even while walking, driving or eating. It’s about being present wherever you are.

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Easy forms of meditation include a few minutes of focussed attention meditation, focussing solely on each breath, or an external object such as a plant. If your mind wanders, bring it back. This is natural, so don’t react negatively when this happens. In fact, meditation can be considered refocussing practice, so the act of having to repeatedly bring your focus back is essential to the improvement process and changing your brain’s biochemistry. Always aim to be accepting and non-judgemental of yourself

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I hope you have found this article interesting. This is the product of my study and experiences, but would not claim to be an expert on meditation. So I would recommend doing more study yourself or seeking out a meditation coach.