Compassionate psychological flexibility in athletes and coaches

Psychological skills training approaches that integrate Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs (Kabat-Zinn, 2013) with interventions focused on compassion (Wilson et al., 2018), flow optimization (Carraca et al., 2019) and psychological flexibility (Gardner, & Moore, 2017) offer evidence-based alternatives that promote improved sports performance, well-being, reduced competitive stress and the prevention of injuries in high-performance athletes (Baltzell & Akhtar, 2014; Sole, Carraca, Serpa, & Palmi, 2014), as well as optimization of the coach-athlete relationship, and binding and compassionate leadership skills in the technical staff (Carraca et al., 2020). In this context, interventions based on compassion and psychological flexibility (Kaufman, Glass, & Pineau, 2018; Porges et al., 2015) emerge as a tool for mediating dispositional flow, potentially beneficial for improving sports performance. In this chapter, we will address a model based on self-compassion and psychological flexibility in the context of sports, the COMPACT model for athletes and coaches.