Effects of isolated and combined mental and physical fatigue on motor skill and endurance exercise performance
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Background Mental fatigue, elicited by cognitive demands, can impair sport and exercise performance. The effects of isolated mental fatigue on performance are well documented but few studies have explored the effects of combined mental and physical fatigue on skilled motor and endurance exercise performance. Objective This study explored the effects of isolated mental, isolated physical, and combined (mental plus physical) fatigue on skill and exercise task performance. Method 164 athletes were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups: mental fatigue, physical fatigue, combined fatigue, control (no fatigue). Mental fatigue was induced by a 15-min time-load dual-back cognitive task. Physical fatigue was induced by a 90-s burpee exercise task. Next, all participants completed a throwing skill task and performed burpee exercises to failure. Objective (brief Psychomotor Vigilance Task, PVT-B) and subjective (self-report) measures of mental fatigue and Ratings of Perceived Exertion were obtained throughout. Results The mental fatigue and combined fatigue groups performed the worst on both the throwing and burpee tasks compared with the physical fatigue and control groups. The former reported higher mental fatigue throughout and had worse response accuracy and variation on the end-of-session PVT-B task. The combined fatigue group performed better than the mental fatigue group on the throwing and burpee tasks. Conclusion A demanding cognitive task induced a state of mental fatigue and imp…
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The adaptive difficulty mode used in the high combined warmup may have helped achieve a challenge-skill balance.
“The adaptive difficulty mode used in our cognitive tasks in the high combined warmup, similar to Mortimer et al. (2024) and Rautu et al. (2025), may have helped achieve this challenge–skill balance, engaging neural pathways associated with cognitive control and motor preparation reported in previous flow research (Ulrich et al. 2014; Katahira et al. 2018).”
From Warming Up Body and Mind: Combined Cognitive and Exercise Priming Improves 1‐Mile Time Trial Performance in Recreational Runners (2026) · cites this paper as Mortimer et al. (2024)
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- Authors
- Mortimer, H., Dallaway, N., & Ring, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Birmingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Ring, Christopher
- Venue
- Psychology of Sport and Exercise
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2024-11
- Volume
- 75
- Pages
- 102720
- ISSN
- 1469-0292 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4401814623
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 13
- FWCI
- 21.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Psychology of sport and exercise (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- UKRI ESRC
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Orthopedics and Sports Medicine › Sports Performance and Training
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and Work-Related Fatigue
- Keywords
- mental fatigue, physical fatigue, motor skill performance, endurance exercise performance, throwing ability, cognitive tasks, psychomotor vigilance task, rating of perceived exertion, athletes
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Fatigue, Mental Fatigue, Female, Humans, Male, Motor Skills, Physical Endurance, Psychomotor Performance, Exercise, Athletic Performance, Young Adult
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