Why Playing Video Games Before a Competition Is Bad for Athletes
It may appear harmless when an athlete is spending time playing video games to kill time before a competition. The athlete is not exerting any physical effort and it appears that they are relaxing. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because the body is relaxing does not mean the brain is relaxing.
Moreover, when the brain is not relaxing, the athlete is physically tiring. So, even an athlete in peak physical condition can physically tire themselves out after intense mental stimulation. This includes playing video games.
Sports illustrated cites a significant body of research concluding this. In the article Figuring out fatigue: A tired brain can hinder performance as much as a tired muscle, the author Ian McMahan writes:
Dr. Samuele Marcora has studied the effects of mental fatigue on soccer performance and discovered that mentally tired athletes don’t perform as well. After inducing mental fatigue with a demanding cognitive test, Marcora and his team of researchers found that the mentally fatigued soccer players couldn’t run as far or kick a ball as skillfully as their mentally-fresh counterparts.
It is important to note that even though the mentally fatigued athletes were performing at an equal level of physical exertion as a control group, those mentally fatigued players perceived the effort as more difficult than those not asked to take a mentally demanding test. Meaning their effort wasn’t physically harder, it just felt harder.
I highly recommend parents and coaches of athletes read this full article on SI.com. The insights suggest mental stress even from meaningless activities like playing video games or surfing social media impacts fatigue. Without doubt, this information is critical to the process of connecting the mental game of sports to the physical game.