Various breathing techniques, including slow-paced breathing and HRV biofeedback, demonstrated positive effects on reducing stress and anxiety and improving physiological markers in adolescent athletes.
Do breathing techniques improve cognitive function and reduce stress in 14-17-year-old adolescent athletes?
Breathing techniques show potential for reducing stress and improving physiological markers like HRV in adolescent athletes, though current evidence is limited and heterogeneous.
Although adolescent athletes face a wide variety of different stressors, various breathing techniques have shown to have a significant impact on cognitive functions and stress levels. The objective of this scoping review is to identify, summarize, and analyse breathing techniques for the enhancement of cognitive functioning and stress reduction for a 14–17-year-old adolescent athlete population. Eight databases (Science Direct, Scopus, Cochrane, ProQuest, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, The Web of Science, and EBSCOhost Complete) were scanned for English-language research on breathing techniques used in adolescent sports environments from January 2000 to December 2023. Five articles were found eligible and implemented such techniques as heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback, slow-paced breathing, Yogic breathing techniques and relaxation breathing. The results showed significantly reduced anxiety, improved HRV indices, lung function and performance, changes in brain waves, significant prediction capability of biopsychosocial stress states and cognitive stress, improvement in positive affect, CO2 tolerance, psychological skills and responsiveness to stress. The included studies used a wide variety of different breathing techniques, and no clear consensus can be reached as to which breathing technique might be more prominent or useful. This scoping review provides the first look at this field for the adolescent athlete population.
Peleckis et al. (Tue,) conducted a review in Stress and cognitive function in adolescent athletes (n=122). Breathing techniques (HRV biofeedback, slow-paced breathing, Yogic breathing, relaxation breathing) vs. Control groups or pre-intervention baseline was evaluated on Cognitive function and stress reduction. Various breathing techniques, including slow-paced breathing and HRV biofeedback, demonstrated positive effects on reducing stress and anxiety and improving physiological markers in adolescent athletes.
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