The Effect of a Brief Mindfulness Intervention on Free-Throw Shooting Performance Under Pressure

Pressure situations in sport can be a source of anxiety for athletes (Craft, Magyar, Becker, & Feltz, 2003). Research indicates that a brief mindfulness training can improve math performance under pressure (Brunye et al., 2013); however, no known studies have examined the effects of mindfulness practice on an athletic performance under pressure. Therefore, this experiment investigated the effects of a brief mindfulness training on basketball free-throw shooting under pressure. Participants were 32 college-aged (Mage = 21.29), male competitive basketball players. Participants shot 20 free-throws in a low-pressure phase, then were pair-matched by free-throws made and randomly assigned to mindfulness (n = 16) or control (n = 16) conditions. Pressure was induced before participants listened to a 15-minute mindfulness or history of basketball recording. Next, free-throws made and free-throw shot quality were recorded for 20 free-throws. A mixed ANOVA revealed that during the high-pressure phase, the experimental groups’ free-throw shooting average (M = 70.6%) was not statistically significantly different from the control groups’ (M = 61.6%). Results of an ANCOVA revealed that the mindfulness group’s shot quality was higher than the control group’s during the high-pressure phase and approached a statistically significant difference when controlling for trait mindfulness (F = 2.33, p = .051, Ƞp2 = .13). During the high-pressure phase, the mindfulness group reported statistically significantly lower levels of cognitive anxiety (t = 2.06, p = .048) and somatic anxiety (t = 2.67, p = .014) than the control group. Although the brief mindfulness intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on performance, the findings are discussed in terms of practical significance. The mindfulness group’s significantly lower anxiety indicates that mindfulness training may improve athletes’ subjective experience during pressure situations

Radical, Reformist, and Garden-Variety Neoliberal: Coming to Terms with Urban Agriculture’s Contradictions

For many activists and scholars, urban agriculture in the Global North has become synonymous with sustainable food systems, standing in opposition to the dominant industrial agri-food system. At the same time, critical social scientists increasingly argue that urban agriculture programmes, by filling the void left by the rolling back of the social safety net, underwrite neoliberalisation. I argue that such contradictions are central to urban agriculture. Drawing on existing literature and fieldwork in Oakland, CA, I explain how urban agriculture arises from a protective counter-movement, while at the same time entrenching the neoliberal organisation of contemporary urban political economies through its entanglement with multiple processes of neoliberalisation. By focusing on one function or the other, however, rather than understanding such contradictions as internal and inherent, we risk undermining urban agriculture\u27s transformative potential. Coming to terms with its internal contradictions can help activists, policy-makers and practitioners better position urban agriculture within coordinated efforts for structural change, one of many means to an end rather than an end unto itself