Effects of Mindfulness on Obligatory Exercise During the Return of Injured Athletes to Sports: The Mediating Roles of Self-Criticism and Competitive State Anxiety

PURPOSE: Despite the Advances in sports training methods and medicine, they have not reduced the recurrence rate of athletes’ injuries significantly, and obligatory exercise may be an important reason for their re-injury. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of mindfulness on obligatory exercise behavior, self-criticism, and competitive state anxiety in athletes recovering from injury, and explain their interactions. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study adopted the snowball and convenience sampling methods. From November to December 2022, a total of 265 high-level sports players in South China were selected, and ultimately, 208 valid data samples were obtained. Maximum likelihood estimation was used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses proposed using 5000 bootstrap samples to test the mediating effects of the structural equation model. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that there were positive correlations between self-criticism and obligatory exercise (standardized coefficients = 0.38, p < 0.001), as well as competitive state anxiety and self-criticism (standardized coefficients = 0.45, p < 0.001). Mindfulness and obligatory exercise were correlated negatively (standardized coefficients = −0.31, p < 0.001), but there was no significant relation between competitive state anxiety and obligatory exercise (standardized coefficients = 0.05, p > 0.01). Self-criticism and competitive state anxiety mediated mindfulness’s positive effects on obligatory exercise in part (standardized indirect effect = −0.16, p < 0.01), and this explanatory power was higher than in any previous study (R2 = 0.37). CONCLUSION: The irrational beliefs in Activating events–Beliefs–Consequence (ABC) theory play an important role in explaining athletes’ obligatory exercise, and mindfulness has a positive effect on reducing obligatory exercise behavior.