Scientific Programme
Psychology, Social Sciences & Humanities
IS-SH02 - From the pitch to the lab and back again: Identifying, understanding and dealing with the various effects of fatigue on sport and exercise performance
Date: 03.07.2025, Time: 08:30 - 09:45, Session Room: Anfiteatro
Description
The purposes of our multidisciplinary symposium are threefold. First, the symposium will explore the psychobiological determinants of sport performance. Using field based studies of football players as a context, we will look at the psychological and physiological determinants of sport performance. Second, the symposium will explore the psychobiological correlates of fatigue, effort and performance. Using laboratory studies as a context, we will look at neurophysiological markers, such as EEG, of fatigue, effort and performance. Third, the symposium will explore the effectiveness of psychological and physiological countermeasures to tackle the deleterious effects of mental fatigue on performance. Using studies of young adult athletes and sedentary older adults we will look at the beneficial and detrimental effects of physical and cognitive warmup activities on padel shot accuracy, resistance exercise, endurance exercise, and cognition. The three talks will provide overviews of the relevant literatures before presenting evidence and recommendations for basic scientists and applied practitioners wishing to monitor, measure and moderate the deleterious effects of fatigue on human performance.
Chair(s)
Christopher Ring
University of Birmingham, School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences
United Kingdom
Speaker A
Tomas García Calvo
University of Extremadura, Sport Science
Spain
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QUANTIFICATION AND MANAGEMENT OF MENTAL FATIGUE AND LOAD IN FOOTBALL
Mental fatigue is increasingly recognized as a crucial factor that influences performance and overall well-being in high-demand sports like football. Players face a combination of intense physical and psychological demands that contribute to cumulative mental fatigue, affecting physical performance, technical-tactical execution, decision-making, and reaction time. For this reason, it is essential to understand how mental fatigue fluctuates throughout the season, the key variables that influence its development, and practical strategies that can be used to manage mental load and effectively control fatigue. From this perspective, mental fatigue can increase over the course of a football season due to the accumulation of training sessions and matches, travel, and the cognitive and emotional demands of competition. However, there are discrepancies in the literature regarding this linear increase across the season, as it appears that these temporal changes in mental fatigue are moderated by competitive context and other situational variables Factors such as motivation, the competitive phase, training load, and the difficulty of opponents contribute to mental fatigue to varying degrees at different points in the season. Understanding this seasonal evolution is crucial in order to adapt recovery and training protocols that help players maintain peak performance. To effectively manage mental fatigue, the quantification and control of mental load are essential. Monitoring mental fatigue is necessary, with neurophysiological measures playing a key role in tracking it and providing targeted support. However, it is not always feasible to use objective measures with current technology, and therefore subjective assessment can also be suitable for understanding the progression of fatigue and mental load. Additionally, it is crucial to generate knowledge on how coaches and technical staff can modulate training demands, using different constraints and strategies. To date, the effect of certain strategies on mental load and fatigue is known, such as creating a positive or negative climate, implementing time constraints for decision-making, adjusting scoring systems, or incorporating rewards or punishments into tasks. However, it is necessary to continue expanding knowledge about other constraints that can moderate these variables. This proactive management approach benefits both short-term performance and long-term player well-being, making mental fatigue management an essential component of football training.
Speaker B
Marika Berchicci
University , Dept. of Education for Motor Activity and Sports
Italy
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PERCEIVED FATIGABILITY DURING PHYSICAL TASKS: ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES AND INTERVENTIONS
Fatigue is a multidimensional concept combining both neurophysiological and psychological aspects and quantified by objective and subjective measures. Fatigue has received considerable attention, due to its broad impact on both mental and physical performance. Here, the focus is on the brain underpinnings of neuromuscular fatigue and the perception of effort during and after endurance exercise. Indeed, brain changes induced by neuromuscular effort can be recorded with electroencephalography (EEG). The most accredited view is that during muscle fatiguing tasks there is an increase in motor-related potentials and/or a modulation in the alpha frequency band over motor-related regions, working as a compensatory mechanism for peripheral fatigue. However, data from recent studies using high-density EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have revealed a modulation that is not limited to motor-related brain regions, but extended to more anterior regions, such as the prefrontal cortex, and involving other frequency band, including theta oscillations. Furthermore, several studies have described EEG changes immediately after exercise, but very few of them have examined EEG during exercise and collected subjective measures of effort and fatigue, such as Borg ratings of perceived effort and fatigue ratings. Accordingly, recording objective and subjective measures of effort, together with brain activities during and after neuromuscular tasks is the only way to obtain a comprehensive view of the processes involved, and to provide the evidence base for countermeasures aimed at tackling fatigue and improving performance. One such approach would be to adopt psychological interventions, like mindfulness. Mindfulness Acceptance and Commitment (MAC) therapy has been proved to be effective in reducing injuries and perception of fatigue, together with increasing emotional regulation, developing greater attention and concentration, improving awareness of the present moment, and accepting/tolerating normal fluctuations in thoughts, emotions and sensations. Taken together, this talk aims to improve understanding of the brain correlates underpinning neuromuscular fatigue and its perception, mechanisms involved during recovery, mindfulness-based programs aimed at reducing fatigue to improve performance and well-being.
Speaker C
Christopher Ring
University of Birmingham, School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences
United Kingdom
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PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE WARMUPS AS MENTAL FATIGUE COUNTERMEASURES
It is well established that fatigue can impair sport and exercise performance. In both athletes and exercisers, mental fatigue - a transient state of tiredness and diminished functioning – is caused various situational demands, such as prolonged cognitive activities and sleep loss. For instance, increased mental fatigue in athletes has been associated with the demands of competition, tournaments, technical briefing/debriefing, early morning and late evening training, travel and jet lag. A number of countermeasures have been evaluated and found to mitigate against the deleterious effects of mental fatigue and/or sleep loss on performance. Effective behavioral mental fatigue countermeasures include mindfulness, motivational self-talk, and music. Similarly, effective sleep loss countermeasures include scheduling rest breaks, consuming stimulant drugs, and using neural stimulation devices. To date the effectiveness of warming up activities has not been systematically investigated. Commonly, individuals are encouraged to physically warmup before they start to play sport or exercise. This is because passive and active warmup activities can help improve subsequent sport and exercise performance. For instance, studies show that 15-minutes of physical warmup activities (e.g., jogging, stretching, joint mobility, jumping) improve subsequent exercise (e.g., running, jumping) and sport (e.g., throwing and shooting) performance. A recent study reported that adding a 10-minute cognitive task before a 15-minute physical warmup improved subsequent basketball dribbling more than no and physical warmups. This exciting new finding suggests the possibility that the improved performance may be attributed, at least in part, to the earlier cognitive task, perhaps by the combined warming up tasks cognitively and physically priming them to perform the task. Accordingly, the purposes of this presentation are to (1) review the effectiveness of extant countermeasures against fatigue and sleep loss, and (2) report the findings of our recent studies on the effects of standard physical warmups and combined physical plus cognitive warmups on performance across a broad range of domains (sport, exercise, cognition), ages (young and older adults), and experiences (fit athletes and sedentary non-athletes) under standard sleep (rested) and sleep deprived (fatigued) conditions. These exciting new findings provide the empirical evidence to encourage individuals and trainers to adapt their standard warmup protocols by adding cognitive drills to better prepare players for competition and older adults for workouts, especially following sleep loss.