The impact of Biosound technology on mental recovery, stress, burnout, and sleep quality in student-athletes and reserve officers' training corps (ROTC)

College student-athletes and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) tactical athletes are expected to perform at optimal levels physically and mentally, while simultaneously balancing academic and social demands. Consequently, these populations experience high physical and mental strain resulting in fatigue, overtraining, burnout, and injury (Balk et al., 2021). Physical recovery has been investigated to address these issues (Campbell et al., 2018); however, mental recovery has been sparingly researched. Biosound© is an emerging technology that could facilitate mental recovery as previous research has shown that this technology reduces stress, racing thoughts, depressed feelings, anxiety, muscle tension, body aches, and headaches among substance misuse patients (Secor et al., 2017). The present study is the first to investigate the impact of a 4-week Biosound© intervention on mental recovery, burnout, stress perception, sleep quality, and cardiac coherence among a student-athlete and ROTC population. Twentyseven participants (21 women, 6 men, Mage = 20.00, SD = 1.76) were randomly assigned to the Biosound© intervention group or the control group and completed pre-and post-measures of cardiac coherence, general and sport-specific stress/recovery, burnout, perceived stress, and sleep 4 quality. At the end of the intervention, participants in the intervention group were asked about their experience using the technology. Results revealed significant improvements in cardiac coherence (p = .010) in the intervention group compared to the control group, and a time effect demonstrating increased general recovery across both groups (p = .049). Intervention group participants reported experiencing improved relaxation, stress reduction, breathing regulation, improved sleep quality, increased mindfulness, and increased positive thoughts. These findings may guide athletes, coaches, ROTC programs, and mental performance consultants regarding evidenced-based strategies to promote mental recovery and reduce negative outcomes of chronic stress.