Mental load and fatigue in football: Current knowledge and practical applications

• Tomás García Calvo ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Extremadura

     Universidad de Extremadura

     Badajoz, España

     
• Localización: Actividad física y deporte: ciencia y profesión, ISSN 1578-2484, ISSN-e 2659-8930, Nº. 31, 2019, págs. 33-33
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this presentation an analysis will be made about the incidence of mental fatigue in football, as well as the possibilities of managing the mental load to control and quantify its effect on players. In this way, after conceptualizing the different variables, studies that have been developed with them and practical applications in football training and competition will be explained.

    In this sense, the mental load could be defined as the amount of mental effort necessary to develop a sport activity or task in a marked period of time, causing a certain level of mental fatigue in the participant (García-Calvo, 2017). From this definition, it seems fundamental for practitioner and coaches, to be able to recognize, quantify and control the magnitude of mental load of the training tasks that apply, and how this can affect the mental fatigue of the athletes, taking into account that fatigue represents a limiting factor in the level of technical-tactical, physical and, of course, psychological performance.

    Among the research works that exist specifically in the context of football, it has been proven that having greater mental fatigue directly affects decision making during the game, worsening the effectiveness and quality, there being a higher rate of technical errors in reduced games, and a generalized decrease in physical performance in different specific situations in football. In addition, it has been found that the effect on the physical performance of the players was more diminished when they were subjected to a certain mental fatigue than when they applied muscle fatigue.

    In order to properly handle the mental load in training, the possibilities that exist to modify each of the different aspects that influence the perception of this type of load in the players must be appreciated.

    Thus, four major strategies are established on which the mental load of the training can be influenced:

    1) the psychological contents that will be trained, 2) the characteristics of the tasks, 3) the behaviour of the coach / coaching staff and 4 ) the organization of the competition. These strategies can increase or decrease the five factors or subtypes of load that must be taken into account due to their effect on the mental or psychological load in football: cognitive load, emotional load, affective-social load, motivational load and physical load.

    Finally, for the assessment of mental fatigue and mental load, subjective perception instruments have been used, such as the NASA-TLX or the VAS, although in recent years progress has been made in more objective assessment formulas, such as pupillometry, electroencephalography, cerebral oximetry and other biochemical parameters.