Given the anxiety-reducing effects of HRV Biofeedback Training (HRVBT), it’s no surprise that the technique has helped high performance athletes perform at their best:
- A golfer with competition anxiety improved their season average by 15 shots after 10 sessions of HRV Biofeedback Training [1].
- Ten basketball players who underwent HRVBT were able to significantly outperform a control group in dribbling, passing, and shooting tasks [2].
- Gymnasts training with HRVBT performed better as judged on criteria of artistry and execution, compared with the season after they stopped using HRVBT [3].
- The batting statistics of a group of baseball players using HRVBT improved by nearly three times compared to improvements of a control group [4].
There have been many times in the history of sport where a new insight into the human body has led to advancements in athletic performance. In the 1950s, Russian physiologist Leo Matveyev discovered that cycling the intensity of training regimes could improve performance at competition time. At the 1952 Olympics, Leo noticed some athletes were ‘on form’ while others who were competent at other times of the year struggled during the competition. He discovered that an optimal amount of stress during training leads to healthy adaptation, but going too far leads to exhaustion. From this he and other sports scientists produced structured training programs around cycles of high intensity and recovery, called periodisation training, to enable athletes to reliably peak their readiness in time for competition.
Sixteen years later, at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, there was another insight into human performance as athletes in endurance events found they weren’t able to break world records that were usually in contention at every games. The cause was the altitude of the venue, which was 2,240 metres above sea level, and meant oxygen concentration was lower than normal. Following the games, athletes began training in high-altitude conditions, to trigger the production of red blood cell production, and gain an advantage when competing back at lower altitudes.
While other techniques in sports psychology seek to address negative thought patterns through methods such as visualisation, one researcher has hypothesised that the effectiveness of HRVBT could come from addressing the underlying autonomic system imbalance that leads to symptoms of performance anxiety [1]. Like with the adoption of other high-performance practices, it will be only a matter of time before we know whether HRVBT will become a mainstay in the toolkit of elite athletes.
References
- Lagos, L., Vaschillo, E., Vaschillo, B., Lehrer, P., Bates, M., & Pandina, R. (2008). Heart rate variability biofeedback as a strategy for dealing with competitive anxiety: A case study. Biofeedback, 36(3), 109.
- Paul, M., & Garg, K. (2012). The effect of heart rate variability biofeedback on performance psychology of basketball players. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 37, 131-144.
- Shaw, L. (2010). Setting the balance: Assessment of a biofeedback intervention for improving competitive performance with a Division I gymnastics beam team. Boston University.
- Strack, B. W. (2003). Effect of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback on batting performance in baseball. Alliant International University, San Diego.
- Jimenez Morgan, S., & Molina Mora, J. A. (2017). Effect of heart rate variability biofeedback on sport performance, a systematic review. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 42, 235-245.