appears after a long task demanding concentration, before you have started running at all, with the muscles still entirely fresh. To find out whether it reaches the pitch, experiments in football, basketball, cricket and Australian rules were reviewed. What suffered?
The skills, not the legs. The review found damage to measures such as accurate passes and shots, losing the ball and defensive reactions. In some tests the distance players covered suffered too, while in closer to real conditions the results were less consistent. The conclusion is that matters to movement as well, not that muscles alone decide performance.
In team sport a decision and a movement happen almost together. So earlier mental effort can affect a pass without changing the strength of the legs.
The found studies that created mental fatigue with a cognitive task and then tested performance in different ball sports.
On some technical measures there were more errors or fewer successes. Effects on physical effort appeared in some experiments, while small-sided games in field conditions gave a mixed picture.
No number here translates directly to any squad. The important question for the next study is when a load like this changes a whole match rather than a short test.
wat. Team sport players may be less accurate in passing and shooting after a sustained mental load.
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A training session or a match that begins after a mental load may look different even with no injury and no earlier physical effort.
How do we know?
A scoping review covered 12 experiments comparing players’ performance after a mentally tiring task and after a condition that was not tiring.
What is still unknown
The number of studies is small, the measures differ, and laboratory experiments do not always reproduce a full match with opponents and a crowd.
Learn something?
Where to next
Where do the eyes go when you take a penalty under pressure?attention
What does it cost to change your mind at the last instant of a penalty kick?accuracy
What do the eyes do in the instant before an accurate shot?accuracy