This study aimed to assess the inhibitory effects of physiological fatigue on cognitive function in elite athletes, and to determine if perceptual-cognitive conditioning can reduce any such effects.

What Was Studied

22 rugby players from the Top 14 French Professional Rugby League were divided into two groups.The trained group underwent 15 NeuroTracker Core training sessions, and the untrained group did only 3 Core sessions (sitting) to determine an initial baseline measure. All the athletes were then assessed on NeuroTracker while performing on an exercise bike at 80% of their maximum heart rate.

What Was Found

For the trained group, NeuroTracker speed thresholds remained within 0.03% of the range of their baseline (performed sitting). For the untrained group, NeuroTracker speed thresholds dropped by 30% from their predicted baseline.

Takeaways

These findings suggest that physical fatigue can significantly reduce high-level cognitive functions elicited by the NeuroTracker task, even with seasoned professionals. The results also indicate that such effects can be mitigated with prior perceptual-cognitive conditioning, with as little as 90 minutes of distributed training.

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Reference: Jocelyn Faubert & Sylvain Barthes, ‘Prior Perceptual-Cognitive Training Builds Mental Resistance During Acute Physical Fatigue In Professional Rugby Athletes’, 2019

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