Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Fatigue is one of the key factors that separates the good from the great in sports. The biggest, strongest, and fastest athletes are only a shell of themselves once fatigue causes exhaustion. Moreover, an athlete may be in the best physical shape of their life and still become exhausted prematurely. The reason for this is because fatigue is as much mental as it is physical.

So, when athletes don’t work on the mental side of conditioning against fatigue, the physical side is less effective. This is not to say that the physical capacity of one’s muscles and lungs matter less. Unquestionably, athletes must be physically capable of enduring the stress of fatigue. However, research suggest that fatigue is far more mental than most athletes realize.

For example, in the Sports Illustrated article Figuring out fatigue: A tired brain can hinder performance as much as a tired muscle, the author Ian McMahan writes:

Researchers have suggested that the sensation of fatigue, once considered solely a physical phenomenon, might also arise from the brain. Meaning that the brain is responsible for collecting the physical sensations of the body—the burning legs and heaving lungs—and deciding how much is too much. This research has demonstrated that mental fatigue—produced by sustained periods of demanding cognitive activity, and described by feelings of “tiredness” and “lack of energy”—can reduce the time it takes to reach exhaustion during exercise.

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, understanding this information is another piece of the puzzle for helping athletes go from good to great.