Abstract
It has been reported that mental fatigue decreases exercise performance during high-intensity constant-work-rate exercise (CWR) and self-paced time trials (TT) in recreationally-trained individuals. The purpose of this study was to determine whether performance is impaired following a prolonged cognitive task in individuals trained for competitive sport. Ten trained competitive athletes (ATH) and ten untrained healthy men (UNT) completed a 6-min severe-intensity CWR followed by a 6-min cycling TT immediately following cognitive tasks designed to either perturb (Stroop colour-word task and N-back task; PCT) or maintain a neutral (documentary watching; CON) mental state. UNT had a higher heart rate (75 ± 9 v. 69 ± 7 bpm; P = 0.002) and a lower positive affect PANAS score (19.9 ± 7.5 v. 24.3 ± 4.6; P = 0.036) for PCT compared to CON. ATH showed no difference in heart rate, but had a higher negative affect score for PCT compared to CON (15.1 ± 3.7 v. 12.2 ± 2.7; P = 0.029). Pulmonary O2 uptake during CWR was not different between PCT and CON for ATH or UNT. Work completed during TT was not different between PCT and CON for ATH (PCT 103 ± 12 kJ; CON 102 ± 12 kJ; P > 0.05) or UNT (PCT 75 ± 11 kJ; CON 74 ± 12 kJ; P > 0.05). Compared to CON, during PCT, UNT showed unchanged psychological stress responses, whereas ATH demonstrated increased psychological stress responses. However, regardless of this distinction, exercise performance was not affected by PCT in either competitive athletes or untrained individuals.
Highlights
The factors responsible for the inability to sustain highintensity exercise have long been debated (Contessa et al 2016)
The V O2peak–INC, Wpeak-INC, WGET and physical-activity rating tool (PA-R) were all significantly greater for ATH compared to untrained healthy men (UNT) (P < 0.01)
We chose to assess the influence of prolonged cognitive task (PCT) on exercise performance in two distinctly different groups of individuals based on their experience with competitive sport and exercise training
Summary
The factors responsible for the inability to sustain highintensity exercise have long been debated (Contessa et al 2016). Marcora et al (2009) reported that time to exhaustion during high-intensity constant-work-rate (CWR) cycling was reduced following completion of a prolonged cognitive task (PCT) that required participants to engage in sustained attention, working memory, response inhibition and error monitoring for 90 min. This reduced ability to perform exercise was not accompanied by changes in mood, motivation or autonomic activation; subjective rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was increased throughout the exercise bout that followed the PCT. This resulted in earlier disengagement from the exhaustive task and a corresponding inability to achieve the heart rate (HR) and blood lactate responses that were present at task failure when a neutral mental state was present (Marcora et al 2009; Martin et al 2018; Pageaux and Lepers 2016)
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