Ahead of a recent race, mid-distance steeplechase runner Colleen Quigley was listening to a guided meditation led by Headspace cofounder Andy Puddicombe. Eyes closed, she took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders as he talked about mental preparedness in a soothing voice through her smartphone. Moments later she lined up at the start and powerfully took off at the gun blast, feeling confident with her training and ample time spent visualizing what she needed to do to win.
Quigley, a runner from St. Louis, Missouri who trains on mindfulness at Nike’s facilities in Oregon, is among an increasing number of athletes using meditation as a supplement to their physical training.
“Andy was talking about how my body has done everything to prepare for the race, I had put in all the work and my lungs and muscles and heart knew what to do and were capable of competing well,” she said. “The only thing that would stop me was my mentality about the race and that part was completely up to me. I knew I needed to find that zone and get locked into an effortlessly strong and powerful stride. I took some deep breaths, relaxed my shoulders, and went out and won the race.”
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Mindfulness is part of a broad trend focused on mentally preparing athletes to be in the zone. The New York Knicks have been using mindfulness training since 2014, led by former team president Phil Jackson, whose Eastern philosophy-style coaching earned him a nickname as the “zen master” of hoops (he parted ways with the team last June). Some teams, such as the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, have gone so far as to use devices to train their brains. This season, the Blazers deployed the Neurocore Pro, which reads players’ brainwaves and alerts trainers if their minds start to wander off a particular task.
At Nike, mindfulness training has become part of the regimens of many of the pro and amateur athletes who come through its facilities in Portland, and the company is now working to expand this to its global fitness community through a newly-hatched partnership with guided meditation app Headspace.
The athletic apparel and sneaker company, which invests in new technologies to engage its fitness community through the Nike Running Club and Nike Training Club apps, added audio-guided runs focused on mindfulness into the running app this month. The first three mindful runs feature Puddicombe, Quigley and Chris Bennett, global head coach of Nike Running.
“The more experienced I get in my sport, the more I realize that so much of an athlete’s success is due to their mindset and their mental strength, more so than their actual physical ability,” Quigley said. “The more I practice hopefully the more I can find that sense of calm and clarity so that I can perform to my maximum potential more often than not.”
Headspace developed its sports meditation content with the help of top sports psychologists, who identified meditation as a key part of an athlete’s overall training, performance and recovery.
The Headspace guided runs in Nike’s app blend technical and motivational components to help runners tap into their flow state to get more out of their workouts. Unlike traditional meditation, often targeted at a relaxed stationary person, Puddicombe says the Nike runs are more active and upbeat.
“Easy to learn and simple to apply, it can help strengthen motivation, increase focus, improve resilience, enhance form, optimize recovery and, perhaps most important of all, get us out of our head and into the body for an enjoyable and fulfilling training session,” Puddicombe said.
Michael Martin, Nike’s Global Head of Digital Products, said the company decided to invest in mindfulness training after being alerted to its benefits by some of the elite athletes training at its facilities in Portland, whom the company often uses as guides when developing new digital products for its fitness community.
“We expanded the aperture and realized that modern sport and modern health require a more comprehensive view. Their training regimens are not the training regimens of old,” he said. “Mindfulness is a key thing they’re focused on, and if elite athletes need that then every athlete in the world requires that.”
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