Trial reportScientific reports2026
Imagery and breathing exercises improve swimming performance, mental toughness, and coherence.
Trial report in Scientific reports, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Resilience in female athletes: a meta-analysis of levels, gender differences, and associations across psychosocial, performance, and health domains.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This randomized controlled trial investigated the effects of a 10-week intervention incorporating imagery and breathing exercises on swimming performance, mental toughness, and cardiac coherence in adolescent swimmers. Nineteen licensed swimmers (aged 13–18 years) were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n = 9), receiving daily 15-min imagery and breathing sessions in addition to regular training, or a control group (n = 10), receiving standard training alone. Pre- and post-intervention assessments included 200-m freestyle performance, the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ), and cardiac coherence measured via the Inner Balance HeartMath device. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed significant improvements in cardiac coherence (p = 0.008, η² = 0.349) and mental toughness (p = 0.003, η² = 0.414) in the intervention group. Although swimming performance improved in both groups (p < 0.001), the group × time interaction was not significant (p = 0.529), suggesting that improvements may reflect practice effects rather than intervention-specific benefits. Due to the small sample size (n = 19), the study is best considered a pilot, with findings warranting further investigation in larger, stratified samples to enhance generalizability. These results highlight the potential psychological benefits of imagery and breathing exercises in youth athletes and support their integration into training protocols, with future studies needed to confirm performance effects.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.