What Mental Fatigue Costs an Athlete
High-performance organizations spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to improve performance. Training is optimized. Recovery is monitored. Nutrition is planned, and technology tracks increasingly small changes in physical output. Yet there is another performance variable organizations should account for when planning training, preparation, communication, and scheduling: cognitive load. This may be especially important in college athletics, where athletes are students first and already carry academic demands that coaches and performance staffs cannot, and should not, remove. If that is truly the priority, then adding unnecessary meetings, inefficient communication, last-minute schedule changes, and poorly organized demands on top of schoolwork makes even less sense. The goal is not to shield athletes from responsibility. It is to avoid wasting cognitive resources on things the organization could manage better.
Cognitive load describes the demand placed on limited cognitive resources such as working memory and attention. Cognitive demand is not inherently negative. Learning, planning, film study, problem solving, tactical preparation, and difficult conversations all require mental effort. The problem occurs when the total demand becomes high or sustained enough to create mental fatigue and begin harming performance.
That distinction is important. Physical work is not automatically bad because it creates fatigue. An appropriate warm-up lift or training stimulus can prepare an athlete to perform, while a demanding workout performed at the wrong time can leave that same athlete less prepared. Cognitive work should be viewed with a similar appreciation for dose and timing. The objective is not to stop thinking, preparing, or learning. The goal is to view and manage cognitive demands in a similar way to physical demands, reducing unnecessary or poorly timed load so performance does not suffer when it matters most.
When Mental Fatigue Reaches the Field
One of the clearest demonstrations comes from research on soccer-specific decision-making. Smith and colleagues had well-trained soccer players complete a demanding cognitive task designed to induce mental fatigue before completing a sport-specific decision-making test. The researchers deliberately used sustained cognitive work to create a mentally fatigued state so they could study what happened once that fatigue was present. The results were significant. When mentally fatigued, players' decision-making accuracy fell from 85.7% to 80.9%. At the same time, their average response time increased from 685 milliseconds to 768 milliseconds, approximately a 12% slowdown. That difference becomes meaningful when placed in the context of competition. Athletes are rarely making decisions in isolation. They are processing opponents, teammates, positioning, time, score, and tactical information while also dealing with the physical and psychological demands of the game. This shows that a mentally fatigued athlete can enter those high-pressure moments already processing information more slowly and making the correct decision less often.
This was not an isolated finding. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis examining mental fatigue across sport found that decision-making was one of the clearest and most consistently affected areas of performance, with technical performance also declining across multiple studies. In practical terms, mental fatigue can make an athlete less likely to choose the correct action and, in some situations, less effective at executing it once the decision is made. In sports where opportunities open and close in fractions of a second, even a small decline in the speed, accuracy, or execution of a decision can be the difference between creating an advantage and giving one away.
Technical and Physical Performance Can Decline
Mental fatigue can also affect how well an athlete physically executes a skill. In another study, soccer players completed technical and intermittent-running assessments after either demanding cognitive work or a control condition. On the passing test, penalty time for passing and ball-control mistakes increased from 5.2 seconds to 9.9 seconds when players were mentally fatigued. Shooting accuracy fell from 2.0 to 1.3 points per shot, and average shot velocity decreased from 85.0 km/h to 81.8 km/h. These results matter because the effect was no longer limited to how quickly or accurately an athlete made a decision. Mental fatigue was also associated with worse execution of the skills required to act on that decision.
The researchers also assessed intermittent running performance. Players covered an average of 1,410 meters in the control condition compared with 1,203 meters after mental fatigue. Every participant performed worse in the mentally fatigued condition, and the average individual decline was reported at approximately 16%. Heart rate did not explain the difference. Instead, the same physical work felt harder when the players were mentally fatigued.
It is important to state that mental fatigue does not necesarily reduce every form of physical performance. The evidence for maximal strength, muscular power, sprinting, and short-duration anaerobic work is considerably less consistent. Reviews have found the more dependable physical effect in endurance and prolonged exercise, where mental fatigue appears to increase perceived effort and can cause people to reach their limit earlier.
Organizations should make deliberate decisions about the total load they place on performers, accounting not only for training and preparation, but also for decisions, communication, logistics, interruptions, academic or professional responsibilities, and the normal demands of day-to-day life that are already competing for attention.
Organizations Help Create the Environment
People do not arrive at competition, training, presentations, negotiations, or other high-value performance situations in a vacuum. Their cognitive state has been shaped by everything that happened beforehand. An organization may require someone to search multiple platforms for schedule changes, repeatedly make logistical decisions that could have been handled ahead of time, deal with unclear travel arrangements, receive conflicting information from different departments, sit through poorly timed meetings, respond to constant interruptions, and repeatedly switch attention between unrelated tasks. None of those demands necessarily creates a problem by itself. The issue is accumulation. When important preparation is combined with administrative work, logistical friction, interruptions, travel, communication issues, and other cognitive demands, the total load can become much larger than any one department realizes.
Research outside sport, illustrates why reducing unnecessary friction matters. In a large observational study examining medication administration in hospitals, each interruption was associated with a 12.7% increase in clinical errors. Researchers have also found associations between interruptions, multitasking, poor sleep, and errors among emergency physicians. These are obviously different environments from professional sport or business, but they demonstrate a broader principle: the design of the environment can influence the quality of human performance.
Manage the Demand, Not Just the Amount
Organizations should manage cognitive work with some of the same logic used to manage physical work. Important preparation can be scheduled far enough from competition or another high-value performance period that the individual has time to recover. Meetings can be consolidated rather than scattered throughout the day. Information can be delivered clearly through one reliable system. Logistics can be handled before they become last-minute decisions. Support staff can remove administrative tasks that do not require the performer's direct involvement.
Time management is a major part of this cognitive load management. The objective is not necessarily to do less. It is to distribute the work better. If the same film study, planning, communication, and preparation can be completed without creating a large pileup of cognitive demand immediately before performance, the organization has preserved the value of the preparation while reducing its potential cost.
Cognitive Load Is Part of Performance Preparation
Organizations already understand this concept physically. Coaches manipulate training volume, intensity, recovery, and timing because the same exercise can produce very different outcomes depending on when and how much of it is performed. Cognitive demands deserve similar consideration. Mental fatigue can make decisions less accurate, responses slower, technical execution worse, and prolonged physical work feel harder. Those effects do not mean organizations should protect people from difficult thinking. They mean difficult thinking should be managed deliberately.
That requires looking beyond individual activities and considering the entire day or week surrounding the performer. A department may see its own 30-minute meeting as reasonable. Another department may see the same thing. Add film, training, treatment, travel logistics, media responsibilities, schedule changes, personal responsibilities, and constant communication, and the total demand may look very different from the athlete's perspective.
High-performance organizations spend considerable resources trying to improve what people are capable of doing. They should also pay attention to whether the environment they create makes it harder for those people to express those capabilities when performance matters most. Reducing unnecessary load around performance is part of what Newman HP helps athletes and organizations manage. Contact us to talk about how we can help.
FAQ
Is cognitive load the same as mental fatigue?
No. Cognitive load refers to the demands being placed on cognitive resources such as attention and working memory. Mental fatigue is a state that can develop after prolonged or demanding cognitive activity. Cognitive work does not automatically impair performance. The concern is when the accumulated demand becomes sufficient to create fatigue.
Does mental fatigue make athletes weaker?
Not necessarily. Research is much less consistent for maximal strength, explosive power, sprinting, and short-duration anaerobic performance. The stronger evidence concerns decision-making, skilled performance, endurance performance, perceived effort, and some measures of response speed.
Should athletes avoid film study or tactical meetings before competition?
Not automatically. Film study, tactical meetings, and other forms of preparation can provide important performance benefits. The goal is not to eliminate cognitive demand or reduce preparation. It is to manage the timing, duration, and organization of that work so the athlete receives the benefit without unnecessarily accumulating mental fatigue before competition.
Is better time management part of the solution?
Yes. Organizations may be able to preserve the exact same amount of valuable preparation while distributing it more intelligently. Moving cognitively demanding work earlier, consolidating meetings, reducing last-minute changes, organizing communication, and handling logistics efficiently can reduce the accumulation of demand around high-priority performance periods.
Is this only relevant to athletes?
No. The same general principle matters anywhere performance depends on attention, working memory, rapid decision-making, and accurate execution. Executives, medical professionals, military personnel, coaches, and other people operating in demanding environments can also be affected by accumulated cognitive demands.
What should organizations do first?
Look at the full environment surrounding important performance periods. Consider meetings, communication, scheduling, travel, administrative work, interruptions, preparation, and the number of decisions the individual is being asked to make. The goal is not to make the environment easy. It is to make sure cognitive effort is being spent on things that actually contribute to performance and is scheduled intelligently.
References and Resources
Smith, M. R., Zeuwts, L., Lenoir, M., Hens, N., de Jong, L. M. S., & Coutts, A. J. (2016). Mental fatigue impairs soccer-specific decision-making skill. Journal of Sports Sciences, 34(14), 1297–1304.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1156241
Smith, M. R., Coutts, A. J., Merlini, M., Deprez, D., Lenoir, M., & Marcora, S. M. (2016). Mental fatigue impairs soccer-specific physical and technical performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 48(2), 267–276.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26312616/
Sun, H., Soh, K. G., Roslan, S., Wazir, M. R. W. N., & Soh, K. L. (2021). Does mental fatigue affect skilled performance in athletes? A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 16(10), e0258307.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258307
Habay, J., Van Cutsem, J., Verschueren, J., De Bock, S., Proost, M., De Wachter, J., Tassignon, B., Meeusen, R., & Roelands, B. (2021). Mental fatigue and sport-specific psychomotor performance: A systematic review. Sports Medicine, 51, 1527–1548.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33710524/
Van Cutsem, J., Marcora, S., De Pauw, K., Bailey, S., Meeusen, R., & Roelands, B. (2017). The effects of mental fatigue on physical performance: A systematic review. Sports Medicine, 47, 1569–1588.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28044281/
Lu, Q., et al. (2026). Effects of mental fatigue on sport-related reaction-time, technical, and decision-making performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42216083/
Westbrook, J. I., Woods, A., Rob, M. I., Dunsmuir, W. T. M., & Day, R. O. (2010). Association of interruptions with an increased risk and severity of medication administration errors. Archives of Internal Medicine, 170(8), 683–690.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20421552/
