The purpose of this research was to explore the slump process and the post-slump growth of elite athletes, and to develop effective mindfulness-based intervention to help them outgrow the slump. The research consists two parts. Study one adapted grounded theory to explore the performance slump process of elite athletes: their experience, coping strategies and post-slump growth. Study two developed a mindfulness-based slump intervention based on the findings from research one. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and interpretive phenomenological analysis and singe case A-B-A research design were adopted to explore their intervention experience and the effectiveness of the intervention. After interviewing 7 athletes with performance slump and conducting intervention toward a golfer, we had the following findings: 1. Performance slump is a process initiated by the increasing emphasis on the results, frustrating results and self doubts and interacted with certain personality characteristics; 2. Performace slump cycle consisits of self-doutbs, efforts to prove onself, frustrating results and insolatoin/helpless situationl; 3. Recovery of performance slump includes the following process: relief of stress, social connection, emotion stability, and refocus on the tasks. And the mindfulness program was proved to be effective on performance, self-awareness, emotion regulation and attention control. The participant stated how the program benefis his performance via the improvement of self-awareness and the ability to stay neutral to negative emotions and thoughts. Through the research, we advanced the knowledge in the performance slump and developed an effective mindfulness-based intervention to help athletes grow from performance slump.
