Developing Positive Interventions against Performance Enhancement Drug Use in Recreational & Grassroots Sport - MINDFUL MUSCLES

Background The use of doping in recreational and grassroots sport presents a perennial issue. Extant interventions focus on minimising the problem (doping) than growing the person by strengthening the characteristics that can protect against pressures to use doping (e.g., physical appearance concerns and anxiety; performance-related worry). Mindful Muscles used a positive intervention approach that addressed such characteristics: mindfulness, acceptance, mental strengths, and self-compassion (MASC). Objectives 1)Identify best practices in MASC interventions and adapt them for anti-doping education in recreational sport.2)Develop and evaluate MASC resources for exercisers and athletes in recreational sport.3)Develop and evaluate a MASC practitioners’ manual for professionals in anti-doping education.4)Develop policy and practice recommendations for incorporating MASC approaches in anti-doping education.5)Inspire research on MASC approaches and interventions in anti-doping education. Implementation Our consortium of academic experts and anti-doping practitioners engaged with and international group of end-users and co-developed open-access, online education resources for recreational sport athletes and exercisers, and a practitioners’ manual in 7 languages. Drawing on the expertise of our partners, we further developed recommendations for policy-makers and practitioners. We also developed an interdisciplinary and international community of practice to inspire future research in the field. Achievements The Mindful Muscles education resources have been evaluated very favourably by exercisers and recreational sport athletes across 7 countries. The Practitioners’ Manual has been positively received by an international group of 35 professionals. Our community of practice of early career researchers developed a successful series of webinars in anti-doping research and launched a special issue in an academic journal about anti-doping in recreational sport. We completed 74 dissemination activities.