Want A Good Workout? Avoid Mentally Demanding Tasks Beforehand, Study Suggests

Want to have a good workout session? Avoid performing mentally demanding tasks beforehand as it may have an impact on your performance, a study has found.

Physical activity is key to good physical and even mental health, and it has both immediate and long-term impacts. Naturally, people would want to make the most out of their workout sessions, but that may not always pan out. One potential contributing factor is mental fatigue.

For their study, which was published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, a team of researchers conducted experiments to see the impact of mental fatigue on physical performance.

"Mental fatigue (MF) can impair physical performance in sport," they wrote. "We tested the hypothesis that cognitive load alone, and intermixed with standard resistance training, would induce MF, increase rating of perceived exertion (RPE), alter perception of weight lifting and training, and impair cycling time-trial performance."

Perceived exertion refers to how difficult it felt to perform the task, explained the University of Birmingham.

Researchers did a two-part experiment involving 16 men and women. In the first task, the participants either completed a 90-minute mental task or simply watched a neutral video for 90 minutes before lifting weights.

For the second part, the participants performed resistance training (six weight training exercises) and a 20-minute cycling time trial. Some of them performed cognitive tasks before and between the weight training exercises, while others simply watched neutral videos. Levels of fatigue were tested after the cognitive tasks.

The researchers found an increase in perceived exertion among the participants who were mentally fatigued. In the second experiment, the mentally fatigued participants had reduced power in the cycling time trial and they also covered less distance.

"A state of MF induced by cognitive load, alone or intermixed with physical load, increased RPE during weight lifting and training and impaired subsequent cycling performance," the authors wrote.

It appears that the tasks felt more difficult for those who were mentally fatigued, thus actually impacting how they performed.

This could be something that coaches could keep in mind, the authors said. By considering the person's mental fatigue levels in training, they could help athletes avoid such mentally tiring tasks that could affect their performance. This even includes avoiding smartphone usage, which may also be mentally challenging.

"We know that athletes will often be browsing on their smartphones in rests between competing and training," said study lead author Chris Ring, of the University of Birmingham. "All of that requires mental effort and our results strongly suggest that athletes and coaches need to better understand the effects of these activities on overall performance."

This is not the first study to show the impact of mental fatigue on physical performance. Last year, a team of researchers detailed how mental fatigue can impair various technical aspects of basketball such as free throws and three-point shots and also impact cognitive performance.

Such studies show just how mental fatigue can actually impact people, whether in their physical, athletic performance or even in the simple aspects of daily life.