Association between mindfulness and musculoskeletal pain in athletes

Abstract

Introduction: Pain is commonly described in athletes with and without disability, and it is often associated with sports injuries. Since pain can have negative impact on sports performance and psychological, physical, social and financial issues, identifying factors that may contribute to managing pain and/ or reducing the risk is relevant and necessary. Objective: To investigate the relationship between mindfulness and musculoskeletal pain in athletes with and without disability. Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted with athletes of individual and team sports for people with (n=35) or without (n=29) disability. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) was used in its translated and validated Brazilian version to assess mindfulness. Musculoskeletal pain was investigated using the Corlett Diagram and the Visual Analog Pain Scale (VAS). Complementarily, six questions from the
questionnaire proposed by Kent et al. (2014) was applied to investigate biopsychosocial aspects related to chronic pain. Results: The body regions with the highest occurrence of musculoskeletal pain complaints were the lower back (43.7%), left shoulder (37.5%), upper back (31.3%) and right shoulder (29.7%). The groups differed in terms of the number of pain complaint areas (p=0.016), this being greater among athletes without disability. In both groups, mean pain intensity was higher in the seven days prior to the study (classification: severe pain) than on the day of the study (classification: moderate pain). Regarding the biopsychosocial aspects of pain, anxiety was the characteristic with the highest mean score among participants, with no difference between groups. Athletes without disability were more concerned about the possibility of getting injured while practicing physical activities (p=0.020). In the
mindfulness analysis, it was observed that athletes without disability had lower mean scores in the total FFMQ (p<0.001), and in the observing (p=0.002) and nonreactivity to inner experience facets (p=0.042). Conclusion: Less development of mindfulness skills appeared to be associated with greater frequency and number of areas of musculoskeletal pain only in athletes without disabilities.