Effectiveness of yoga training program as a pre-exercise activity on sport anxiety and athletic mental energy in adolescent football players

This study examined whether embedding a brief pre-exercise yoga routine into warm-ups relates to lower sport anxiety and higher athletic mental energy in Chinese adolescent football players, and whether these links operate through mindfulness in sport and vary by weekly training load. In a multi-site sample ( N = 468; Wuhan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xi'an), athletes completed validated instruments: Sport Anxiety Scale-2, Athletic Mental Energy Scale, Mindfulness Inventory for Sport, Yoga Self-Efficacy Scale, and a short form of interoceptive/body awareness; pre-exercise yoga engagement was modeled formatively (frequency, duration, adherence, intensity), and weekly training load was indexed as seven-day session-RPE × minutes. SmartPLS (v4) was used for PLS-SEM with 5000 bootstraps. The measurement model showed strong reliability and validity (composite reliability ≥0.91; AVE ≥ 0.58; HTMT <0.85; Fornell–Larcker satisfied; full-collinearity VIFs <3.3). Pre-exercise yoga practice was also linked with reduced sport anxiety (β = −0.16, p = 0.003), and increased athletic mental energy (2 = 0.14, p = 0.005); yoga self-efficacy was more strongly linked (2 = −0.20, and 2 = 0.24, both p = 0.001), and lower interoceptive/body awareness was more weakly correlated (2 = −0.11 and 2 = 0.12, both = 0.027). The indirect relationships between the predictors and the outcomes of mindfulness in sport were also significantly large, which is in line with the hypothesized mechanistic pattern. The weekly training load moderated a number of engagement and self-efficacy associations (|human| > Some associations between them were stronger under heavier load (=0.07–0.09, p = 0.048). These results indicate the existence of warm-up-compatible, formatively specified yoga exposure and practically significant load boundary, yet are still consistent with the cross-sectional design of the study… Demographic covariates were non-significant. The study's novelty lies in a warm-up–compatible, formatively specified yoga exposure, a single mechanistic mediator, and a practical load boundary, offering a scalable pathway to reduce anxiety and enhance mental energy without extending training time.